KIEV, Sept. 27 - Natural gas transit through Ukraine to Europe from January 1 to September 25 increased by 0.4% compared to the same period in 2012, to 59.7 billion cubic meters, Ukrtransgaz said on Friday.

Thus, for the first time since the beginning of 2013 the trend towards the reduction in natural gas transit through Ukraine has been broken. In January this year compared to the same month last year a drop of 23.2% was fixed in gas transit, in January-February - by 24.3%, in January-March - by 17.1%, in January-April – 18.5%, January-May - 16.4%, January-June - 11.3%, January-July - 6.8%, and in January-August - by 3.1%.

Ukrtransgaz also notes that as of September 25 Ukraine's underground gas storage facilities had accumulated 15.3 billion cubic meters of gas, from April to the end of September this year some 9.7 billion cubic meters of gas had been pumped into the facilities. Taking into account another 900 million cubic meters of gas in the underground storage facilities of Chornomornaftogaz, in October Ukraine will have the reserves of more than 16 billion cubic meters.