Kyiv Sikorsky Airport (Zhulyany) is to extend its runway and improve the characteristics of landing approach systems, Denys Kostrzhevsky, head of the airport’s board of directors, has said. “Kyiv Airport has a runway whose length is 2,350 meters. It is located in the central part of the city. Accordingly, its landing approach systems allow aircraft to land and take off under certain weather conditions. To be able to service aircraft in any weather conditions and handle larger aircraft, Kyiv Airport needs to upgrade the category of the airfield,” he told Interfax-Ukraine in an interview.
Kostrzhevsky noted that a master plan for the reconstruction of the airfield had already been developed, it has five different options. Each of them foresees an extension of the runway by 550 meters, improvement of the characteristics of landing approach systems (lighting navigational aids and radio navigation equipment). The estimated cost of the project ranges from EUR 80 million to EUR 100 million.
“The city needs to solve two problems. The first is to allocate plots of land, the second is either to disburse or raise money. There are different ways to raise money: one may take a loan or call a concession tender. If the city decides on concession, then, of course, Master Avia, the airport operating company, will participate in this tender,” the top manager said.
If such a decision is not taken, there may be loans, he added. “Perhaps it will be financing from the municipal budget or there will be a lease with an investment obligation. We do not know this,” he said.
According to him, in particular, the airport asks to allocate 12 hectares of land at the ends of the runway. Currently, the documents are under approval.
“We are in dialogue with the authorities. How quickly the approval will be depends on Kyiv City State Administration and Kyiv City Council. They have been there for eight months. I hope we will get certain results soon,” Kostrzhevsky said.
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine will conduct an audit of the financial statements of NJSC Naftogaz Ukrainy, MP Oleksiy Honcharenko has said.
He posted a photocopy of a government resolution on his Facebook page that says that at its meeting on Wednesday, the Cabinet approved the appointment of Deloitte & Touche Ukrainian Services Company (USC) as a subject of auditing activities to provide services of the mandatory audit of financial reporting.
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
