Moscow (AFP)

Moscow and Kiev have renewed for ten years their Russian oil transit contract for Europe via Ukraine, disrupted this year by a large incident of polluted oil, announced the Ukrainian oil transport company.

Uktransnafta announced Tuesday on Facebook that it has entered into a valid contract from 1 January 2020 for ten years with its Russian counterpart Transneft.

"The basic principles of cooperation (...) remain unchanged," says the Ukrainian operator.

Without giving further details, Uktransnafta nevertheless asserts that an "additional" agreement was signed which "guarantees the safe and sustainable operation of the oil transport system in Ukraine (...) to European countries and constitutes a source of revenue stable in the long run "for the group.

Contacted by AFP, Transneft has confirmed the signature.

According to S & P Global Platts analysts, Ukraine's transit of Russian oil to Europe in 2011 was 13.3 million megatonnes, compared with 13.9 in 2017, a decrease of 4.3%.

Between January and September 2019, this volume was down 5.1% year-on-year, mainly because of a polluted Russian oil incident passing through the important oil pipeline "Droujba" ("Friendship" in Russian) to a certain number of European countries.

This incident caused an unprecedented interruption of transit to Europe via this pipeline from 25 April to 11 May and again from 17 to 21 May.

Russia and Ukraine are negotiating, with much more difficulty, a new gas transit agreement, mediated by the European Union.

The transit agreement between Russia and Ukraine comes to an end at the end of 2019 and the two countries, at loggerheads, can not agree on what will happen next. Kiev's takeover of Volodymyr Zelensky in May, however, eased relations between the two countries somewhat.

In the coming months, two gas pipelines - the German-Russian Nord Stream 2 and the Turkish-Russian Turkish Stream - bypassing Ukrainian territory are expected to enter service, which would deprive Kiev of a substantial financial windfall and a weapon of weight against Russia.

© 2019 AFP