OREANDA-NEWS. October 22, 2014. According to Vice-president of the EC Energy Commission Gunther Oettinger, the European Commission included Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine to the report on the EU winter energy security.

As he told journalists, Ukraine is considered as an especially important partner of the EU which seeks closer association with the European Union. This is a country that itself is in dire need for gas and a country which transits gas to other states. Besides analyzing abilities of each of EU member states to survive in case if the Russian gas import halted, the European Commission also analyzed abilities of accession and partner states, including Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine. According to Gunther Oettinger, the EC thoroughly examined what would happen if Russia halted the gas supplies.

“What will happen if Ukraine (we does not expect this, but who knows) fails to fulfil its transit obligations? This is the worst scenario we have considered in our stress test”, he said. Gunther Oettinger has noted he is going to Kyiv soon to hold consultations with Ukrainian partners and a gas meeting among the EU, RF and Ukraine is taking place in Brussels next week.

The EU has to be ready if the talks are fruitless and should assess its gas abilities taking into consideration supplies from other sources, such as Algeria and Norway, for example. To foresee every possible eventuality the EU had stress-tested the gas systems of the EU member states, accession candidates and partner countries, the EU Commissioner for Energy explained.