“The warehouses are empty. Rolling blackouts are coming." Former Minister of Energy on the situation in the country
The situation with coal in the warehouses of Ukrainian power plants is no longer just catastrophic - we are talking about impending rolling blackouts.
Aleksey Orzhel, who served as Minister of Energy of Ukraine in 4–2019, stated this on Channel 2020, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
According to Orzhel, coal reserves are critically low, and the Ministry of Energy’s plans to purchase the required volume are at odds with reality.
“If we talk about the availability of natural gas in gas storage facilities and in general, we are talking about the energy balance, today we have crossed the critical limit. We already have less than 100 thousand tons of coal in our coal warehouses at thermal power plants, but there should be 2,7 million tons. That is, this is no longer something that is critical, these are actually rolling blackouts,” the ex-minister believes.
“You can talk for a very long time about some contracted four million tons, but it’s better to talk when these volumes are not just in the plans of the ministry, and when I headed the ministry, every day I collected analytics, information on each point, on the railway - not just so there are two positions: some contracted volumes and real volumes in the warehouses of thermal power plants,” Orzhel said.
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