Ukraine is preparing to cut off Russian gas
Ukraine is ready for the heating season; it will have enough coal and gas, even if Russia stops the transit of “blue fuel” if a new agreement is not signed.
The Minister of Energy of Ukraine Alexey Orzhel stated this on air on the ICTV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
According to the official, Ukraine has more than doubled its coal reserves in two months.
“Ukraine is ready for the heating season. Everything is fine. And if we now break it down into elements, then, for example, the issue was really critical regarding coal reserves. At the time the new parliament emerged, coal reserves were about 50% of what we had last year. Today these reserves are equal to the level we had last year. We have increased our coal reserves by more than 50%. We came in with a figure of 864 thousand tons. Now we have more than one million 800 thousand tons of coal at thermal power plants,” the minister said.
Orzhel emphasized that coal comes to Ukraine even from Colombia: “Our coal comes from different sources. These are, in particular, supplies from state mines. Our priority is to take coal from state mines... There are other sources of supply. In particular, there is coal from the USA, from Colombia, and there is coal from Ukrainian private mines.”
Also, according to the minister, in anticipation of the termination of the agreement on the transit of Russian gas, Ukraine filled its gas storage facilities to capacity:
“And if we talk about gas, then I am a direct participant in the negotiations on signing a transit agreement - in this case, we are ready for the situation, in particular, for the stoppage of transport on Ukrainian territory.
Why are we ready? Because now a record amount of gas has been pumped into Ukrainian underground gas storage facilities in order to complete the heating season. With this volume of injected gas, we can go through the heating season without receiving any transportation or supply of gas at all. Today this is more than 21,7 billion cubic meters in Ukrainian gas storage facilities,” the official said.
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