Production of natural gas in Ukraine in January-October 2019 decreased 0.4% (by 67.5 million cubic meters, mcm) compared to the same period in 2018, to 17.237 billion cubic meters (bcm), the Ministry of Energy and Environment Protection has reported. According to the ministry, enterprises of NJSC Naftogaz Ukrainy saw 1.6% decline (214.7 mcm) in gas production, to 13.432 bcm. Gas production by PJSC Ukrgazvydobuvannia amounted to 12.459 bcm (2.3% lower from January-October 2018), by PJSC Ukrnafta to 966.8 mcm (8.6% up), and PJSC Chornomornaftogaz – 5.8 mcm (7.9% down).
Other companies increased gas production by 4% year-over-year (by 147.2 mcm), to 3.805 bcm.
Other large gas producers were PrJSC Naftogazvydobuvannia (1.367 bcm), PrJSC Ukrnaftoburinnia (608.42 mcm), ESKO-Pivnich LLC (448.45 mcm), JV Poltava Petroleum Company (222.39 mcm), PrJSC Natural Resources (154.23 mcm), PrJSC Ukrgazvydobutok (132.21 mcm), Regal Petroleum LLC (122.52 mcm), KUB-Gas LLC (111.76 mcm) and PrJSC Davon (82.1 mcm).
As reported, Ukraine in 2018 increased gas production by 0.5%, to 20.898 bcm.
A.G.R. Group agricultural holding intends to become a public company and is mulling an IPO, the holding said in a press release. “A.G.R. Group plans to become a public company and enter the international borrowing markets, in particular, IPO,” the agricultural holding said in a statement.
According to Svitlana Korytska, the corporate investment director, A.G.R. Group conducted the restructuring of the holding, received positive audit conclusions from KPMG.
A.G.R. Group is an agricultural holding with 19 companies. Its core business is the cultivation of grain crops, mainly corn and soybeans. The holding is also engaged in animal husbandry and grain storage.
A.G.R. Group enterprises cultivate land in Poltava, Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy regions. The grown products are sold in foreign markets.
The land bank of the agricultural holding is 28,800 ha.
The founder and sole shareholder of A.G.R. Group is Misak Khidiryan.
The German low cost bus carrier FlixBus has started cooperation with the Ukrainian company Regabus, launching trips from Odesa via Prague to Plzen (the Czech Republic). According to FlixBus Director for Poland and Ukraine Michal Leman, the trips will be operated by branded buses in a branded green livery.
“Regabus has been on the market for 25 years. We specialize in transportation between the Czech Republic and Ukraine. We were the first to support the standards that FlixBus represents – Euro6 buses,” a Regabus representative commented on the start of cooperation with FlixBus.
The launch of the new route is scheduled for December 11, 2019. Buses will run five times a week and ride through Uman, Vinnytsia, Khmelnytsky, Ternopil, and Lviv. In addition, there will be stops in Krakow (Poland), Olomouc and Brno (the Czech Republic).
Leman also said that in 2020 the company plans to increase the number of routes to Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic and Hungary, as well as open new routes to southern Europe and the Baltic countries.
FlixBus is a German company developing bus transportation in Europe and the United States, founded in 2013.
On December 5, 2019, at 10:00, a press conference initiated by the European-Ukrainian Energy Agency regarding the future of bioenergy projects in Ukraine took place at the press center of the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
Speakers:
Oleksandra Gumeniuk – Director of European-Ukrainian Energy Agency (EUEA)
Max Lebedev – Member of the Board of European-Ukrainian Energy Agency, Partner of GOLAW
Michael Rutherford – Development Director of Khmelnytskyi Biofuel Power Plant (KBPP)
Georgy Geletukha – Chairman of the Board of the Bioenergy Association of Ukraine (BAU)
In May 2019, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a law “On Amendments to Certain Laws of Ukraine on Ensuring Competitive Conditions for Generation of Electricity from Alternative Energy Sources”, which substantially changes the rules of the game for the participants of the green energy market. According to the provisions of this law, as of January 1, 2020, entities implementing renewable energy projects (RES) will be able to obtain state support only if they participate in the auction with the support quota allocation and only if they win.
The Ministry of Energy recently issued indicative state support quotas for auctions, which will total around 50 MW per year for biomass, biogas and small hydropower producers.
Such small quotas, experts warn, make it impossible to implement large projects and lead to an outflow of investors who have already entered the market. Foreign investors who have already invested heavily in the development of bioenergy projects in Ukraine will have to abandon their plans due to the inability to obtain guaranteed state support. As a result, the development of biomass electricity production may stop altogether, and projects that are already underway will be frozen.
One of the examples is the Khmelnytskyi biofuel power plant. A group of foreign investors from Ireland and the UK is planning to build a 46 MW bio-power plant that will produce biomass electricity. The project is now in its final stages and is awaiting the first auction to secure funding. The investor has already invested 1.4 million euros in its implementation. In the future, the investor group intends to build 10 more similar stations in other regions of Ukraine, investing more than $2 billion in them and creating 5 thousand new jobs.
However, these intentions may not be realized, as the quotas proposed by the Government do not allow even one project to potentially obtain the necessary quota of state support.
This provision, say representatives of the KBPP, could cause a situation where large-scale biomass projects will not be able to obtain the necessary capacity, which will block the development of the projects needed for the grid.
Market experts also say that compared to other sources of alternative energy, biomass is the most efficient and solves a number of problems typical of solar and wind plants. In particular, it enables uninterrupted power generation in 24/7 mode, efficient use of farm by-products, opening up sources of additional income for farmers and balancing the grid.
Therefore, this industry needs additional support from the state, and therefore they propose to consider increasing the quota or introducing an additional quota for stable generation facilities.
«What we are calling for are levels of quotas which are sufficient to allow the biomass sector to attract investment at a suitable scale to assist with the balancing issues the country is facing whilst also providing jobs and economic prosperity» – emphasized Michael Rutherford, Development Director of Khmelnytskyi Biofuel Power Plant.
European-Ukrainian Energy Agency, established in 2009, unites investors from Austria, Belgium, Great Britain, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, the USA and other countries that implement renewable energy projects in Ukraine using solar, wind and bio-energy (around 2 GW of operational renewable power plants, 0.5 GW under construction, 2 GW with signed pre-PPAs). http://euea-energyagency.org/.
Video of the press conference is here
About one million passengers used the services of the Kyiv Boryspil Express train from Kyiv to Boryspil International Airport (Kyiv) over the year, the press service of JSC Ukrzaliznytsia (Kyiv) has reported, with reference to head of the company Yevhen Kravtsov.
“I’m sure no one will argue now that the express train to Boryspil airport is needed. During its first year of operation, it made about 10,000 trips and transported almost one million passengers. And this is the indisputable evidence of success of this project,” Kravtsov said.
The report notes that a record number of passengers was transported in August and September 2019 with 98,200 and 107,600 people respectively. The most popular trains are No. 842 Kyiv-Boryspil at 17:50 and No. 845 Boryspil-Kyiv at 19:17.
According to the head of Ukrzaliznytsia, the company plans to further develop this project. Currently, the reconstruction of the Vydubychi station is nearing completion, where a stop platform for the express train will be built.
“Vydubychi station will turn into a transport hub that will combine bus transportation, railways, subway and air transport. In addition, a diesel train manufactured by Kriukov Car Building Works is expected for this route. And this is an additional 170 seats,” he said.
Over a day, express trains carry out 57 trips and carry 2,500 passengers.
JSC Ukrposhta launches the delivery of parcels within three to six days from the date of shipment from a warehouse in Poland to Ukraine, the press service of the company has said.
According to a press release, Ukrposhta together with the private postal operator SMART Forwarding (with the head office in Greece) and the Polish company InPost have already begun test deliveries of international mail from Poland.
“We and our partners provide perhaps the only economical official channel for delivering goods or things. It’s convenient, reliable, simple. For example, sending a package with sneakers, clothes and food in factory packaging weighing 10 kg and with the size of up to 19x38x64 cm through an InPost post terminal will cost about PLN 37, or about UAH 230 in equivalent,” the press service of Ukrposhta said, citing first deputy director general of the company Oleksandr Pertsovsky.
According to him, if the value of a parcel per recipient does not exceed the customs limit of EUR100, customs clearance will be carried out according to a simplified mechanism.
“Now we are working in a test mode, doing weekly deliveries, arranging all processes. We plan to increase the frequency of departures from Poland to two or three per week,” the expert said.
The departure route from Poland to Ukraine can be tracked by the track number on the Ukrposhta website.
According to the company, the new delivery channel is safer and about 20-25% more profitable than alternative options.
In the near future, Ukrposhta plans to launch similar channels for the international delivery of parcels to Ukraine from Italy, Britain, and Germany.
