Stockholm court of arbitration ordered national stock company Naftogaz of Ukraine to return 12.1 bn cu m of gas to trader RUE (RosUkrEnergo) - joint venture between Gazprom and businessman Dmytro Firtash. If Naftogaz pays the trader by gas from underground storages, the company may not have time to restore supplies towards the heating season.

The sides have different assessment of the cost of gas. RUE believes that Naftogaz has to pay US $5.4 bn, the Ukrainian side at the time of withdrawal of gas estimated it at US $1.6 bn, and it costs US $2.78 bn for Ukraine now, the newspaper Kommersant Ukraine writes.

Naftogaz now has more than 13 bn cu m of gas pumped into underground storages. Theoretically the Ukrainian company can settle accounts with RUE, the newspaper writes. However, this gas is purchased by the company for the upcoming heating season. A source in the Fuel and Energy Ministry argues that if the gas is transferred to RUE, Naftogaz will not have enough time to pump the necessary volume.

A source familiar with the negotiations of the parties, said that they can normalize relations through a purely paper transaction. The official representative of Gazprom Sergei Kuprianov said that the option of calculating the parties has not yet been chosen, reports Ukrainian Pravda.

At the same time managing partner of the company Astapov Lawyers Andrii Astapov said that the decision of the Stockholm court of arbitration is still to be confirmed in Ukraine.