OAO Gazprom, Russia ’s biggest company, said its first-quarter profit slumped 41 percent on a foreign currency loss and Ukraine’s debt for natural gas supplies. Net income dropped to 223 billion rubles ($6 billion) from 381 billion rubles a year earlier, the Moscow-based exporter said in a statement on its website. Gazprom, which provides 30 percent of the European Union’s gas, halted supplies to Ukraine in June over unpaid bills, including $1.45 billion from 2013. The Russian producer now estimates it’s owed $5.3 billion after raising the price for Ukraine in April to a level higher than it charges Germany , which the government in Kiev has rejected as unfair. The quarter marks the “start of not an easy year,” Gazprombank energy analysts wrote in an e-mailed note before the report. While a weaker ruble is compensating for a decrease in Gazprom’s export prices, the biggest negative factor is […]