AFP: Germany's RWE to supply natural gas to crisis-hit Ukraine
RWE, Germany's second-biggest power supplier, said on Tuesday it will start gas deliveries to Ukraine as Russia threatens to cut off the country's supplies.
"RWE -- via its trading subsidiary RWE Supply & Trading -- is the first European supplier to commence gas deliveries to the Ukraine in 2014," the German group said in a statement.
The deliveries are part of an existing five-year framework agreement -- signed in May 2012 -- that allows RWE to ship up 10 billion cubic metres of natural gas a year to Ukraine, but the gas supplies must be agreed on annually.
Last year, RWE supplied about one billion cubic metres of gas to Ukraine. The deliveries, to be transported to Ukraine via Poland, are known as "reverse flows" because normally the gas, which comes from Russia, is transported in the other direction to Europe via Ukraine.