National Energy Company Ukrenergo has presented the Market Management System platform for two new segments of the wholesale electricity market (the balancing market and the ancillary service market), which has been functioning in the test mode since December 2018. “Now we are trying to organize the schedule of our work in such a way as to create minimally sufficient functionality for launching a new market on July 1,” Ukrenergo CEO Vsevolod Kovalchuk said at the presentation on Tuesday.
He recalled that the platform developers intend to suspend work due to slippage in the payment schedule: the Energy and Coal Industry Ministry stopped agreeing on payments after the reassignment of Ukrenergo to the Finance Ministry.
Kovalchuk expressed hope that the problem will be resolved in March. To this end, the Finance Ministry and the Justice Ministry will prepare draft amendments to a resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers and the contract of Ukrenergo with a consortium of contractors. Approval of the changes will allow transferring the payment approval functions of Ukrenergo from the Energy and Coal Ministry to the Finance Ministry, which will unblock the payment process for software being developed for the new wholesale electricity market, the head of the transmission system operator said.
Currently, the Market Management System platform operates in test mode. The players of the energy market – producers, electricity suppliers and distribution system operators – are being registered. Data on consumption and transmission of energy is collected for the development of mathematical models that will allow forecasting misbalances in the market of electricity (the difference between predicted and actual consumption).
According to Ukrenergo, today the level of filling the platform with data is insufficient, so the indicators in it are not relevant.
One troy ounce=31.10 grams
Ukrainian metallurgical enterprises in January 2019 reduced steel production by 4.9% compared to the same period in 2018, to 1.850 million tonnes, moving from the 12th to 13th place in the ranking of 64 countries, the major global manufacturers of these products, compiled by the World Steel Association (Worldsteel).
A decrease in steel production in most of the top ten countries, except for China, the United States and Brazil was recorded in January.
The top ten producer countries in January are as follows: China (75.013 million tonnes, an increase of 4.3%), India (9.180 million tonnes, a fall of 1.9%), Japan (8.141 million tonnes, a drop of 9.8%), the United States (7.647 million tonnes, an increase of 11%), South Korea (6.211 million tonnes, a fall of 1.5%), the Russian Federation (5.790 million tonnes, a fall of 4.5%), Germany (3.410 million tonnes, a decrease of 7.2%), Brazil (2.933 million tonnes, an increase of 2.3%), Turkey (2.565 million tonnes, a drop of 19.5%), and Iran (2.230 million tonnes, a fall of 2.6%).
They are followed by Taiwan (2.010 million tonnes, an increase of 10.4%), Italy (1.959 million tonnes, a decrease of 3.6%), and Ukraine (1.850 million tonnes, a fall of 4.9%).
Ukrzaliznytsia is currently considering the possibility of entering foreign markets for the purchase of diesel fuel from direct producers, according to a press release from the company.
“In addition to expanding the circle of suppliers, this will allow removing significant pressure on domestic prices in Ukraine, which often takes place when the company purchases diesel fuel,” chairman of the board Yevhen Kravtsov said.
He noted that Ukrzaliznytsia consumes 10% of the total volume of this oil product, currently sold in Ukraine.
Kravtsov stressed that in order to avoid sharp price fluctuations in the domestic market of petroleum products, Ukrzaliznytsia should have foreign alternative supply channels, in particular, for diesel fuel.
“Our purchase of even 100,000 or 200,000 tonnes is not so decisive to cause price fluctuations [in the external market] as it is happening in Ukraine now,” he said.
Ukraine’s Agricultural Policy and Food Ministry has revised upwards its forecast for exports of grain from Ukraine for 2018/19 agricultural year (July-June) from 47.2 million tonnes to 49 million tonnes, the press service of the ministry has reported. “This agricultural year we expect that grain exports from Ukraine would reach 49 million tonnes,” Deputy Minister Olha Kovaleva said.
As reported, Ukraine since the beginning of the 2018/2019 agri-year as of February 20, 2019 had exported 31.31 million tonnes of grain and leguminous plants, which is 21.5% more than on the same date of the previous agri-year. On the specified date, 164,000 tonnes of flour had been also exported.
The gross grain harvest in Ukraine in 2018 amounted to about 70.1 million tonnes compared to 62 million tonnes in 2017.
