Reuters wins the big, market-moving story in Russia gas dispute

Reuters was more than 45 minutes ahead of Bloomberg, Dow Jones and AFP on January 6 with the biggest development yet in Russia’s gas price dispute with Ukraine — the market-moving news that the rest of Europe would start to feel a major impact from the reduction of Russian gas flows through Ukraine in a few hours. Bloomberg ran the news 45 minutes after Reuters, quoting AFP. Dow Jones was 48 minutes behind. Russia’s gas move left homes in southeastern Europe without heating, forced the closure of energy intensive factories in Bulgaria and Hungary and pushed up spot gas prices by 10 percent. The dispute has also sent oil prices higher. This was the latest win in a saga that began when talks between Ukraine and Russia over gas prices and debts broke down. On Dec 31 Reuters was seconds ahead of Bloomberg and Dow Jones with the news Gazprom would begin cutting gas supplies to Ukraine on Jan 1. Then on Jan 1, Reuters broke the news that Gazprom had fully cut off supplies to Ukraine. This was 16 minutes ahead of Bloomberg and 18 minutes ahead of Dow Jones. Ukraine is a major transit route for Russian gas exports. Initially, Ukraine and Russia issued assurances that onward shipments to the rest of Europe would be unaffected. The January 6 development dashed any such hopes.