Ukraine hopes to persuade Russia abandon South Stream - Azarov

KIEV, June 11 (Itar-Tass) -- Ukraine hopes to persuade Russia to
invest in the modernization of the Ukrainian gas transport system, and not
in the South Stream pipeline project.
As Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov said on the first national television
channel on Friday, "there is nothing more reliable for Russian gas
supplies to Europe than our pipeline system."
"We are determined to make Russia and the EU sure about the
reliability of Ukraine's pipelines, which after relatively small upgrade
will be capable of delivering to Europe more than 200 billion cubic meters
of gas to completely and reliably cover its needs," Azarov said. "It will
be far better to invest money in upgrading our system than spend 20
billion euros on South Stream," he added.
Azarov expressed his confidence the gas transit of Russian gas through
Ukraine would total 100 billion cubic meters of gas a year. "In any case,
we will have approximately 100 billion tonnes of transit traffic," said
Azarov.
Earlier he said that Kiev wanted to get long-term guarantees of
Russian gas transit through its territory and would be ready to increase
throughput by a third after the pipelines' upgrade. Ukraine in 2010
increased natural gas transit to the CIS countries and Europe by 2.9
percent to 98,602.49 million cubic meters as compared with 2009.