Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko supports initiatives on having the Odesa-Brody pipeline work in “averse mode”, but is against involving off-shore companies in this project. She stated this during a press conference today in the Cabinet of Ministers.

“The Odesa-Brody pipeline was built to be used in this direction, to diversify oil supply in Ukraine and Europe,” said the Premier.

She clarified that as soon as talks finish between participants of the project, the government will support the parties’ proposals if oil suppliers from those countries with confirmed oil reserves and ability to supply are directly involved in the work of Odesa-Brody.

The Prime Minister stressed that the government can not support “any strange schemes” for the functioning of the Odesa-Brody pipeline.

“We will never support cooperation and basically what is shadow privatization of the Odesa-Brody pipelines through off-shore companies that deny Ukraine the right to influence this project and deny Europe the right to have a normal project and a corridor for diversifying oil supply,” explained Tymoshenko.

“We are certainly in favor of the oil pipeline flowing in the correct, as specified by the project, direction, when a consortium and team of countries gets together that is ready to extend the pipeline to European countries and will guarantee stable supply of oil,” noted the Head of Government.

“The off-shore company that they want to conclude an agreement with intends to take technical oil in the amount of approximately $100 million, that has been pumped into this pipeline, and then not replace it with anything. This is simply a large shadow scheme which the government will never allow and does not support,” she said.

As reported, on July 28, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine obliged the government to do everything possible so that by the end of 2008 the Odesa-Brody pipeline was working in averse mode. In addition, the Cabinet of Ministers has until September 1 to analyze the conclusions of the interdepartmental working group on Odesa-Brody functioning in averse mode and present its final proposals on its implementation.

On May 22, President Viktor Yushchenko issued a decree to create an interdepartmental working group and commissioned it with drafting a weekly plan to switch the direction of flow of oil through the Odesa-Brody pipeline from Odesa to Brody while preserving revenues.

Yulia Tymoshenko called the version of averse mode proposed by the Presidential Secretariat a corrupt scheme similar to RosUkrEnerho.