Chisinau - A week-long Russian embargo of natural gas deliveries to Moldova had left the former Soviet republic with idled factories and increasingly cold homes, the Infotag news agency reported.

The Kremlin in a row with Kiev over natural gas deliveries on January 7 cut off all fuel shipments through Ukraine to Europe. The move severed all natural gas deliveries to Moldova.

Moldova and its renegade province Transnistria, located on the route of the southern-most pipeline connecting Russia's natural gas fields with European customers, now are facing widespread shortages and increasing industrial shutdowns as a result, according to the report.

Hot water to homes and residences throughout Moldova has been shut off for close to a week. Due to the gas shortages, central heating plants had lowered temperatures in public housing some 30 per cent below average winter levels, below 20 degrees centigrade in many locations.

Moldova's government on Thursday had put into effect a range of energy economy measures, among them a halt of gas deliveries to major industrial concerns, and all businesses with debts on past deliveries. Heating plants where possible had shifted from natural gas to diesel oil, said Jakob Cazacu, a Moldova government spokesman.

Ukraine on Thursday began selling a small volume of gas to Moldova, but though appreciated the fuel is insufficient to prevent the Moldovan economy from grinding to an almost total halt, said Igor Dodon, Moldova Minister of Fuel and Energy.

Prior to the emergency Ukrainian shipment, outlying villages in Moldova's south, had no source of gas entirely, Dodon said.

The energy situation was similarly grim in the renegade Moldovan province Transnistria, which achieved de fact independence from Chisinau in 1992 after a civil war.

Heating was out to dozens of outlying villages on Thursday, and the Transnistria's economically-critical steel mill and petroleum products processing plant both were shut down, for lack of power, according to an Interfax news agency report.

Volumes of fuel provided by Ukraine were so low in Transnistrian pipelines, that on-shipment to Bulgaria - an emergency measure promised by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko - was not possible, said Nikolai Mistinsky, chairman of the Transnistrian gas shipment company Tiraspoltransgaz.

The Ukrainian emergency gas delivery had however allowed Transnistria to turn on four regional heating plants giving regional homes and residences their first centrally-produced heat in a week, Mistinsky said.

Temperatures in houses throughout the unrecognised republic were still extremely low, as overall gas deliveries to Transnistria currently, even including the emergency Ukrainian shipments, were some 7 per cent of normal winter volumes, he added. (dpa)