Acting President of National Nuclear Generating Company Energoatom Petro Kotin announced an unprecedented restriction of nuclear energy generation on May 27.
“Today, the restrictions imposed on us by the government in electricity generation have fallen to historic lows, namely, to 6.63 GW from 9.49 GW available,” he wrote on Facebook on Wednesday through the Energy Reform Internet portal.
Kotin is confident that this “is unlikely to contribute to solving the financial issues of the company and the stability of the country’s power market.”
According to the data on the company’s website, on May 27, some 10 out of 15 power units of Ukrainian nuclear plants were in operation.
The Cabinet of Ministers at a meeting on May 27 approved a memorandum with Louisiana Natural Gas Exports on possible LNG supplies from the United States to Ukraine and the development of gas infrastructure with Poland. “The Ministry of Energy and Environment Protection has worked out a draft memorandum of cooperation between Louisiana Natural Gas Exports and the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine on facilitating gas supplies to Ukraine and improving gas infrastructure, which provides for exploring the possibility of diversifying natural gas supply routes by ensuring long-term supplies of liquefied natural gas and developing cross-border gas infrastructure in Ukraine and the EU,” Olha Buslavets, the acting Minister of Energy and Environment Protection, said.
According to data released by MP Oleksiy Honcharenko (the European Solidarity faction) on Telegram, the document provides for an annual LNG supply of about 5.5 billion cubic meters, and its price will be determined in accordance with the prices on the American gas exchange Henry Hub.
The memorandum, in particular, provides for the construction of a new gas pipeline between the gas hub Hermanowice (Poland) and the Bilche-Volytsko UGS facility. Project funding may include support of certain U.S. and European government agencies.
Final agreements may include a long-term agreement for the supply of LNG from the United States to Ukraine, an agreement on gas storage in Ukrainian underground gas storage facilities, an agreement on the construction and operation of necessary infrastructure between Poland and Ukraine.
The Cabinet of Ministers has included Panama in the list of offshore zones.
The government made the relevant decision at a meeting on Wednesday.
According to an explanatory note, Panama earlier was put on the list of the EU offshore zones.
One more commercial special flight to Ukraine was done on May 26 to bring Ukrainian citizens home during the quarantine.
“Another 277 citizens come back home from the United States. A special commercial plane brought people from New York. This is the ninth special flight organized by Ukraine during the quarantine,” Embassy of Ukraine in the United States reported on Facebook.
The COVID-19 pandemic pushes for cash to go to “normal Fintech,” in particular, the development of digital currencies of central banks, Economist and Professor at the Institute of Sciences Po Sergei Guriev has said. “The future is in the digital currencies of central banks. Central banks will gradually move away from cash, you will have Fintech in hryvnias… Everyone will have an account with the central bank,” he said during a public interview organized by the Kyiv School of Economics.
Guriev added that this trend is a challenge for commercial banks.
“You will have an electronic hryvnia. You will no longer have the cash hryvnia,” he said.
Previously, central banks argued that cash should be avoided by the need to combat the shadow economy, but in the current conditions, the pandemic pushes to it.
“Now it’s clear that this pandemic is not the last. And cash is a source of infection. Therefore, the transition to digital payments will accelerate. But it will not be bitcoin, it will be a normal Fintech,” the economist said.
