MOSCOW, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- Ukraine will not be sidelined as a natural gas transit country by Russian plans to develop the Nord Stream and South Stream pipelines, an analyst says.
Vladimir Milov, the director at Moscow's independent Institute of Energy Policy, said rival projects that circumvent Ukrainian territory would not marginalize Ukraine as a transit country for Russian gas bound for European markets, Ukraine's news agency Ukrinform reported.
Milov spoke at a roundtable discussion on the impact of the January row between Russia and Ukraine over gas arrears and contracts, which disrupted European gas supplies for weeks. Ukraine hosts roughly 80 percent of the Russian gas bound for Europe.
Milov said Nord Stream, a project planned to pass through the Baltic Sea to Germany, is irrelevant in terms of Ukrainian supplies, as the Nord Stream market is completely separate from those fed by Ukraine.
On South Stream, a project to transit Russian gas to Italy, Milov said any project near the Black Sea would require permits from Ukraine as the planned South Stream route travels in the Ukrainian maritime economic zone, Milov added.
The Russian-Ukrainian gas dispute put renewed focus on diversifying the European energy sector. A similar row briefly disrupted European gas supplies in 2006.
