Ukraine's imports of natural gas from Europe decreased 18.1% year on year, or 49 million cubic meters, to 221 million cu m in July from about 270 million cu m in July 2013, state gas shipper UkrTransGaz said Thursday.
The country's imports of gas from Europe in July dropped 32.9% month on month from 329.3 million cu m imported in June, the company said.
Ukraine imports gas via Poland and Hungary, after Russia, its main gas supplier, completely suspended gas deliveries on June 16 due to a dispute over gas prices.
In July, Ukraine received 118 million cu m of gas from Poland and 103 million cu m from Hungary, UkrTransGaz said.
In the first seven months, Ukraine imported 821 million cu m of gas from Europe, down from 900 million cu m imported a year ago, UkrTransGaz said.
Ukraine plans to start imports of European gas via Slovakia in September through the Vojany-Uzhgorod gas pipeline with a total capacity of about 10 billion cu m of gas annually.
In January through July, Ukraine imported a total of 14.72 billion cu m of natural gas, mostly from Russia, up 18.2% from 12.45 billion cu m imported in January-July 2013, UkrTransGaz said.
The Ukrainian government is working on a plan to survive the upcoming winter without Russian natural gas supplies and plans to introduce a state of emergency that will reduce consumption of gas by sectors of the economy.
In January-July, Ukraine reduced its natural gas consumption 15%, UkrTransGaz said.
