Gazprom Resumes Gas Flows to Europe Through Ukraine.

The resumption came after European Commission President Jose Barroso said yesterday an agreement allowing shipments to be measured was approved by all sides. Gazprom’s European customers receive 80 percent of their supplies via Ukraine’s pipelines. Observers from Austria, Hungary, Italy, France and the Czech Republic started work at metering stations in western and southern Ukraine, Ukrainian energy company NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy said.

“EU monitors are useful window dressing for both sides to climb down from the dead-end positions that they had worked themselves into,” Ed Chow, an analyst at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, said from Washington late yesterday. “Monitors by themselves do not solve any of the fundamental issues in the dispute.”

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