Kiev- Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukrainian Prime Minister and populist politician, accused a leading US energy firm Monday of secretly planning to sell sensitive Black Sea gas drilling rights to Russian corporate giant Gazprom.

Executives from the Houston-headquartered Vanco Energy International, a firm that signed an exclusive deep water drilling rights agreement with the Ukrainian government in April, intend to abandon their Ukrainian project and to transfer rights to Gazprom, Tymoshenko charged, according to an Interfax news agency report.

Vanco chairman Jim van Dyke in previous statements has said his company's interest in developing Ukrainian gas fields is serious, long-term, and that he expected the
10-year project to be profitable.

Tymoshenko's statements cast doubt on one of the biggest planned energy development project since Ukraine's 1991 independence, and continued a Tymoshenko tradition of favouring electioneering over market principles.

The terms of the project - a 50/50 profit share between Vanco and the Ukrainian government for any gas recovered - are unfair to Ukraine, which should develop fields in the Azov Sea without foreign assistance, Tymoshenko argued.

The Vanco-Ukraine agreement, announced in October 2007 and finalised in April, will if successful drastically reduce currently heavy Ukrainian dependance on Russian natural gas imports, observers said.

Initial investment was 60 million dollars for two research wells and infrastructure improvement, with investment potentially set to quadruple once productive gas fields are discovered, Korrespondent magazine reported.

Tymoshenko during a 2000 tenure in the job attempted to freeze petrol and meat prices shortly before a general election. She has broadly hinted she wants to replace Ukraine's current President Viktor Yushchenko, a support of free markets and non-government intervention in them.

Yushchenko in recent months has repeatedly complained Tymoshenko, his theoretical subordinate, is actively undermining his pro-free market policies to position herself for a run at the presidency.

Tymoshenko in her Monday remarks said she was working to protect the interests of average Ukrainians. (dpa)