EC Urges Ukraine to Stock Up

With Ukraine's gas storage barely a third full, the European Commission has urged the country to stock up with cheap summer gas. As of July 17 the country's huge capacity had just 10.035bn m³ ahead of winter, or 32.4% full.

EC vice-president for the energy union, Maros Sefcovic met Ukraine's prime minister Volodymyr Groysman in Brussels July 19. They discussed a broad agenda of issues related to EU – Ukraine energy relations and underlined the need to carry on the important reform processes going on in the areas of gas, electricity and energy efficiency.

With a view to the preparations for the winter heating season, Sefcovic expressed the critical importance of filling up the facilities. The falling gas prices in Q3 2016 were most favourable to pump in additional significant amounts of gas, he said.

In this context, he encouraged Naftogaz Ukrainy and Gazprom to agree on the terms for the purchase of Russian gas, which was in their mutual interest. The EC stood ready to facilitate, if necessary and requested, the talks in a trilateral format, as had proven to be successful for the past two winters.

Naftogaz Ukraine CEO Andriy Kobolev said the company was "grateful to the EC for the proposed help in conducting the trilateral negotiations" and ready to participate in such a meeting in the nearest time and place suitable to all parties.

Ukrainian energy security (Credit: UkrTransGaz)

The state-owned importer told NGE July 22 that it began importing gas on its own account in July. "EBRD has completed its prequalification process. We will issue further statements on EBRD in due course," it said in a statement.

The storage facilities were not intended to be fully used in order to meet domestic peak demand. Before relations worsened between Russia and Ukraine, Gazprom used to book capacity in the plants to back up its gas deliveries to Europe, but that is no longer an option, leaving them emptier than otherwise. However, the country's storage operator UkrTransgaz, which also operates the pipeline network, has sought expressions of interest from other customers, along with some transportation capacity rights to bring the gas in and out of the country, as an alternative revenue source.

William Powell

.