BRUSSELS, July 26 (KUNA) -- European Union's top energy official Tuesday said that the announcement by Russian energy giant Gazprom on Monday to reduce gas flows is "politically motivated" and called for reduction of gas consumption by EU member states.
"Yesterday's announcement by Gazprom underlines once again that we have to be ready for supply cuts from Russia at any moment. This is a politically motivated step and for that reason, the preemptive reduction of our gas is a wise strategy," Kadri Simson, European Commissioner for Energy, told reporters ahead of a special meeting of EU energy ministers in Brussels today.
"Today we will have some interesting political discussions because member states have different circumstances, different starting positions but I do hope that at the end of the day we do have a political agreement," she added.
Simson said that later in the day, EU ministers will have an informal lunch with Ukrainian energy minister German Galushchenko to discuss the EU's energy cooperation with Ukraine.
Gazprom announced yesterday that it is once again reducing gas flows into Germany to allow work on a turbine on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
On his part, Jozef Sikela, Czech Minister of Industry and Trade, said today's meeting will discuss how to reduce and save gas consumption.
"We will do our best in order to have an agreement which will be acceptable for all EU member states," he told reporters, adding that different EU states are in different positions and some are not interconnected.
"Unity and solidarity is the best weapon we have," he stressed. The Czech Republic holds the current EU Presidency.
The European Commission on July 20 presented a European gas demand reduction plan which sets a voluntary target for all EU member states to reduce gas demand by 15 percent between August one, 2022 and March 31, 2023. (end) nk.lr