There is a shortage of fuel at Kyiv gas stations - cars are standing in kilometer-long queues
Now fuel is sold only according to quotas of 20 liters per person, because there have been interruptions in the supply of fuel for a week now. Gas station workers do not know how long the outages will last.
“This is due to the fact that there is a shortage of petroleum products in the country. Now it is the most acute - for gasoline. The situation with diesel fuel is a little better, but, to put it mildly, there is no surplus. This arose for several reasons, the first being that the Kremenchug oil refinery was shut down as a result of an attack in early April. You also heard about oil depots, we have already counted more than two dozen missile strikes,” Sergei Kuyun, a Ukrainian expert on energy issues, director of A-95 Consulting Group LLC, comments on the situation.
In addition, according to him, Ukraine now has problems with importing fuel, since the war has disrupted established logistics delivery routes.
“The country has state regulation that does not allow the import of individual batches of petroleum products, which simply turn out to be more expensive than this regulated price. Accordingly, traders simply did not buy fuel due to the fact that its sale in the future would simply be unprofitable,” Kuyun noted.
According to the expert, this situation will last at least until the end of May.
“Accordingly, until the end of April we are seeing a trend towards increasing restrictions in retail sales. Now we are reaching the end when sales will be quite limited (today, it seems, there are already 10 liters on hand). I think the situation will continue throughout May,” predicts the director of A-95 Consulting Group LLC.
According to Kuyun, today fuel imports to Ukraine come exclusively from Europe.
“This is a new direction and, accordingly, it needs to be improved, solving many different resource, logistics, and regulatory problems. It is going on and it is growing, but this is happening gradually and, accordingly, during this period there will still be a shortage of fuel,” says the expert.
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