Ukraine will have enough gas for the winter, but only for the warm season
Gas reserves in Ukraine's underground gas storage facilities are currently insufficient to survive the cold winter, and Ukraine may not have time to accumulate the necessary volumes of gas.
Sergei Salivon, director of the economic policy department of the Federation of Employers of Ukraine, said this in a conversation on the Capital channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“We now have 16,4 billion cubic meters in storage. On the one hand, this is a lot. When we entered the winter of 2016-2017, we had less than 15 billion. We were lucky with the winter, it was very warm and we got through it. But let's imagine for a second that the next winter will be as cold as the previous one. The Cabinet of Ministers obliged Naftogaz to accumulate 17 billion cubic meters. The selection of 13 billion is almost incredible - from such a volume, firstly, the pressure will not allow it to be raised in the required volumes. There might just not be enough pressure,” Salivon said.
“If there were 15-17 billion in storage at the beginning of last winter, then in the January frosts there would simply not be enough pressure to get it out of there in the required quantities and we would have to save on someone, turn off either industry, or the population, or whether Teplokommunenergo. That is, there could be either a humanitarian catastrophe or an economic one. It’s hard to say what will happen this year in winter, maybe we’ll be lucky again. But there may be other options,” the expert noted.
“But there are other nuances. The fact is that of these 16,4 billion cubic meters, not all belongs to Naftogaz. There, about 5 billion belongs to all sorts of private owners. Moreover, about 4,5 billion belongs to non-residents. “Ukrtransgaz” actually managed to hand over storage facilities for storage when European storage facilities were filled to capacity due to the cheapness of gas.
For the first time, Western Ukrainian UGS facilities were used in significant quantities for gas storage. Now about 4,5 billion cubic meters are stored there. Owners from Europe can request this at any time, especially due to the fact that European storage facilities are poorly filled. According to the forecast, by the heating season they will be filled only 70%. This is lower than ever.
If we subtract non-residents, we get about 12 billion cubic meters now,” concluded Salivon.
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