The European Commission has confirmed it is impossible for NJSC Naftogaz Ukraine to carry out unbundling by singling out its gas transportation assets as a separate gas entity due to the refusal of Russia's Gazprom to change the transit contract, valid until December 31, 2019, Naftogaz 's Chief Commercial Office Yuriy Vitrenko has said at a round table meeting.

At present many people speculate Naftogaz refuses to conduct unbundling, which is part of the pro-Russian disinformation campaign aimed at promoting the Nord Stream 2 project, Vitrenko said.

"During the tripartite consultations that took place in Berlin, we asked a direct question to Gazprom before the European Commission and we told them that we do not need to wait until 2020, let's change the transit contract that will allow us to do this. They refused, and this led to the fact that the representative of the EC at these talks told everyone that it meant that we could not conduct unbundling before the end of 2019,"said Vitrenko said.

As it was reported, initially the model and terms of Naftogaz's unbundling assumed the transfer of gas transmission assets to management of PJSC Main Gas Pipelines of Ukraine (MSU) for 30 days after a decision by a Stockholm arbitration court. At the same time, the arbitration did not approve the possibility of transferring a transit contract with Gazprom to another operator.

According to Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolev, taking into account the decision of the Stockholm Arbitration, according to which Naftogaz will receive money for transit shipment of 110 billion cubic meters of Russian gas through the Ukrainian gas transport system in the next two years regardless of the actual volumes of transportation, the previously adopted model of unbundling should be adjusted.