Natural Gas Prices in Europe
Prices of natural gas for end-consumers vary greatly throughout Europe. One of the main objectives of the projected single EU energy market, is a common pricing structure for gas products. Europe's main natural gas supplier is Russia. Since the major pipelines pass through Ukraine there is an ever arising dispute on the supply and transition prices between Ukraine and Russia.
During the negotiations in 2008 Ukraine proposed that the price of natural gas for Ukraine should increase by $21.5 to $201 per 1,000 cubic meters, and the transit fee by $0.3 to $2 per 1,000 cubic meters pumped 100 kilometres (62 mi). Russian Gazprom proposed that Ukrainian Naftogaz should buy its natural gas at $250 per 1,000 cubic meters starting from 2009. Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin said that the $250 per 1000 cubic meters price was a "humanitarian gesture" to Ukraine considering that Russia buys gas from Central Asia for $340 and that the European price level is $500 per 1000 cubic meters. Later, Naftohaz said it was ready to pay $235. Negotiations between Gazprom and Naftohaz were interrupted on 31 December 2008. While Gazprom claimed that Naftohaz would not negotiate, Ukraine said that the negotiations were interrupted at Gazprom's initiative.
Read more about this topic: Natural Gas Prices
Famous quotes containing the words natural, gas, prices and/or europe:
“Rivers must have been the guides which conducted the footsteps of the first travelers. They are the constant lure, when they flow by our doors, to distant enterprise and adventure; and, by a natural impulse, the dwellers on their banks will at length accompany their currents to the lowlands of the globe, or explore at their invitation the interior of continents.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... when I awake in the middle of the night, since I knew not where I was, I did not even know at first who I was; I only had in the first simplicity the feeling of existing as it must quiver in an animal.... I spent one second above the centuries of civilization, and the confused glimpse of the gas lamps, then of the shirts with turned-down collars, recomposed, little by little, the original lines of my self.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“On the breasts of a barmaid in Sale
Were tattooed the prices of ale;
And on her behind
For the sake of the blind
Was the same information in Braille.”
—Anonymous.
“All the terrors of the French Republic, which held Austria in awe, were unable to command her diplomacy. But Napoleon sent to Vienna M. de Narbonne, one of the old noblesse, with the morals, manners, and name of that interest, saying, that it was indispensable to send to the old aristocracy of Europe men of the same connection, which, in fact, constitutes a sort of free- masonry. M. de Narbonne, in less than a fortnight, penetrated all the secrets of the imperial cabinet.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)