Two new drilling rigs with a carrying capacity of 450 tonnes from China’s Sichuan Honghua Petroleum Equipment arrived in Odesa seaport late on Monday, the press service of JSC Ukrgazvydobuvannia has reported.
Ukrgazvydobuvannia Board Chairman Oleh Prokhorenko said that as of 2016, the average age of drilling rigs of the company was 23, and the average age of drilling rigs in Russia was 10 years and in Belarus – nine years.
“Finally, Ukraine has begun to invest in the development of its own gas production, its own drilling fleet and the exploration of its own resources. The arrival of these new drilling rigs is one of many concrete steps that will increase gas production in Ukraine,” he said.
As reported, late 2017, Ukrgazvydobuvannia signed a contract with Bentec GmbH Drilling & Oilfield Systems (Germany) to supply five drilling rigs with a capacity of 450 tonnes (2,000 HP) for $110 million. The first rig was delivered to the company in October 2018.
It is also planned to buy ten Chinese drilling rigs with a capacity of 450 tonnes.
The Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority of Ukraine counts on the successful completion of the corporatization process by the end of 2019 if it is included in the list of strategic companies that can be corporatized before the end of 2018, head of the agency Raivis Veckagans has told Interfax-Ukraine.
“We hope that by the end of the year, the Cabinet of Ministers will decide to include us in the list of strategic companies that can be corporatized. And in this case, we aim to complete corporatization in a year, because we need to change the legislative framework,” he said.
According to Veckagans, the corporatization of the Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority will mean, first of all, a greater transparency of the structure for the market, as well as acceleration of administrative processes within the company.
“It is important for us after the completion of corporatization and the creation of the supervisory council to have the opportunity to manage the assets held on the balance sheet of the company and use them effectively to attract cargo traffic, that is, income,” he stated.
Hungary’s low cost airline Wizz Air in January-October 2018 transported over 1.2 million passengers on flights from/to Ukraine, which is a 2.1-fold rise year-over-year. “During the first 10 months of 2018, the airline carried more than 1.2 million passengers on its low cost routes to/from Ukraine, which is 110% growth compared to last year and makes Wizz Air the largest low cost carrier in Ukraine,” the press service of the airline reported.
According to the press service, for 2019 Wizz Air announced four new routes: from Kyiv to Bremen, Billund and Riga, and also from Lviv to Copenhagen. The airline also confirmed its intention to deploy the fourth Airbus A320 at its base in Kyiv. As reported, Wizz Air offers flights on 41 routes to 12 countries from three Ukrainian cities – Kyiv, Lviv and Kharkiv.
China’s Sinohydro Corporation Limited plans to complete the reconstruction of 23 km of a bypass road around Zhytomyr with a total cost of EUR40 million in 2020, Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan has told reporters on the sidelines of the Conductors of Changes (Dyryhenty Zmin) conference in Kyiv. “The project is carried out at the expense of international financial organizations. The total investment is EUR40 million. Some 23 km of roads, several junctions, overpasses over railways will be built for them. It is assumed that construction will be completed in 2020,” the minister said.
He added that for the first time Ukrainians will receive a full-fledged concrete road of the first category, which will have four lanes.
As reported, in 2017 Ukravtodor and Sinohydro Corporation Limited signed a contract for the work, the expected completion date of which is 2020. The reconstruction cost is more than EUR42 million. The work is financed by a loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
Ukraine has large resource potential and can become European Texas, U.S. Energy Secretary has said. Perry made the remarks during a meeting with representatives of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine and the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council.
“Ukraine is unique in the sense of where it finds itself in the world at this particular point in time. Not only can they be a major supplier from the standpoint of bringing LNG in through Poland in particular, and then supplying Europe from there. But the potential for exploration and production in Ukraine – this is quite a statement from me, but Ukraine would be the Texas of Europe. The formations that are here — the potential for the development of those is, I think it’s staggering. I remind people that a decade ago, they told us that we had found all the fuel — the fossil fuels — in the world. They called it peak oil, remember? The guy traveled the country giving a speech about peak oil. And those resources were always there. But innovation and technology allowed us to be able to access them. And today the United States is the number-one oil and gas producing country in the world. And that’s a stunning turnaround,” said Perry, who was Texas Governor from 2000 to 2015.
The U.S. Energy Secretary added that many U.S. companies are interested in cooperation with Ukraine.
More than 20% of Ukrainians polled have said that they are going to vote for Yuliya Tymoshenko, the leader of the All-Ukrainian Union Batkivschyna (Fatherland) party, in the upcoming presidential elections in Ukraine in 2019, a poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, the Razumkov Center and the Sociological Group Rating shows. According to the result of the poll, 21% of those polled are ready to vote for Tymoshenko for the next president of Ukraine.
She is followed by showman Volodymyr Zelensky (11%), the incumbent president Petro Poroshenko (10%), and the leader of the Civic Position party Anatoliy Hrytsenko (10%).
Then comes one of the leaders of the Opposition Platform for Life Yury Boiko (9%), followed by the leader of the Radical Party Oleh Lyashko (8%), rockstars Svyatoslav Vakarchuk (6%), and MP Yevhen Murayev (5%).
The anti-rating is led by Poroshenko as more than a half of Ukrainians are not going to vote for him under any circumstances.
The poll was jointly conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, the Razumkov Center and the Sociological Group Rating from October 19 to November 2, 2018. A total of 10,000 people aged from 18 and up were polled in all the regions of Ukraine except for Crimea and Russia-occupied territories in Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The statistical margin of error is no more than 1%.
