Gazprom Group has partially surrendered to a third party a guarantee for a Gazprombank loan to Dmytro Firtash's Ostchem Holding Limited, sources with knowledge of the situation have told Interfax.

As a result of the deal the group could lower provisions by slightly under 60 billion rubles that were created for this guarantee.

If at the end of 2015, according to Gazprom's report under IFRS, the guarantee amounted to 61.404 billion rubles, this now markedly reduced to around 3.5 billion rubles.

Gazprom will keep a guarantee of this amount for Gazprombank until June 30, 2017.

One of the sources said that Gazprombank itself was the new guarantor.

As reported, Ostchem used the Gazprombank loan to purchase 5 billion cubic meters of gas for injection into the Ukrainian underground storage in 2013. Due to Ostchem's inability to fulfill its obligations Gazprom Group provided Ostchem with a guarantee. At the end of 2014 a reserve of 47.4 billion rubles was formed, rising to 61.4 billion rubles by the end of 2015.