Platts: Ukraine’s civil strife has a shale angle
Slovyansk is a city in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, where some of the fiercest fighting between the government’s armed forces and pro-Russian separatists have take place.
Perhaps less known is the fact that Slovyansk also sits on a huge deposit of shale gas, known as Yuzivska, which Ukraine has planned to tap to reduce dependence on the Russian energy.
This, along with Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula with major offshore gas projects, underscores a curious pattern: Moscow, its troops and pro-Russian rebels have been targeting areas that harbor Ukraine’s key upstream gas projects.
“In the context of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, one can say with high probability that the shale gas project will now be frozen,” Yuriy Korolchuk, the head of the Energy Research Institute, a Kiev-based think tank, said. “Certainly, in this situation Russia wins, remaining nearly a monopoly supplier of gas.”