Azernews.Az

BAKU – Ukraine intends to buy up to 5 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani liquefied natural gas per year from 2015, a Ukrainian energy ministry official said in Baku Tuesday.

Igor Kiryushin told a meeting of the two countries’ taskforce on energy cooperation that Kyiv was ready to cooperate with Baku in building an LNG terminal at the Georgian port of Kulevi. The facility will be constructed under the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romania Interconnector (AGRI) project, which will allow to transport Azerbaijan’s liquefied gas to European markets through Georgia and Romania.

Ukraine also offered Azerbaijan to participate in the construction on its soil of an LNG terminal, which is due to be completed by 2015, Kiryushin said.

Ukraine and Azerbaijan signed an intergovernmental memorandum on the supplies of Azerbaijani liquefied natural gas and an agreement on cooperation in oil transit to Europe in late January.

Ukraine expects these agreements to help it reduce dependence on Russian energy supplies following several energy spats between the two neighbors in recent years, which led to a brief halt of Europe-bound gas supplies in 2006 and 2009.

Azerbaijani Deputy Energy Minister Natig Abbasov said that though Ukraine has offered to import 2 to 5bn cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas annually, the issue "has to be thoroughly studied".

Ukraine is also seeking to expand its cooperation with the resource-rich South Caucasus republic in the oil sector.

"We are offering to transport Azerbaijani oil to Europe through Ukrainian territory from 2012. But we don’t know at this point what the Azerbaijani side’s reply will be," Kiryushin said.