DTEK Group’s total investments in its areas of activity in Ukraine, excluding the Tiligul wind farm project, amounted to approximately $550 million in 2023, and $1 billion in total since the beginning of the full-scale war, said Maxim Timchenko, CEO of the group.
“The total volume of investments in DTEK Group, excluding the Tiligul wind farm project (EUR 200 million – IF-U), was approximately $550 million last year, and $1 billion in total since the beginning of the full-scale war,” Timchenko said in an exclusive blitz interview with Interfax-Ukraine from the International Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.
According to him, during the war, DTEK “invested huge amounts of money in grids, power plants, coal mining, oil and gas.”
“There are probably not many Ukrainian companies that have invested so much in the country’s economy during a full-scale war,” the DTEK CEO emphasized.
“In 2023, DTEK Energy invested about UAH 11 billion in the repair campaign at thermal power plants and Ukrainian coal mining, which is almost twice as much as in 2022, when investments amounted to about UAH 6 billion.
“Thanks to this, we managed to restore a significant part of the thermal generation capacities damaged by enemy shelling, implement the annual scheduled repair campaign at thermal power plants, and support the production of coal volumes necessary for their reliable operation,” the energy holding said in a press release on Friday.
Last year, the company’s power engineers restored nine power units after massive shelling. The renewed facilities made it possible to increase the operation of thermal generation at peak consumption.
“To prepare the equipment of thermal power plants for maximum performance in the current heating season, DTEK Energy has carried out 24 repairs of power units as part of the annual scheduled maintenance campaign,” the company said.
In addition, DTEK Energy has mothballed two additional power units with a total capacity of 500 MW to compensate for the capacities that could not be repaired before winter. Investments in the repair campaign, according to preliminary data, amounted to about UAH 4 billion, compared to UAH 2.2 billion in 2022.
As part of the repair campaign, the company purchased and stockpiled critical equipment in case of new shelling, and provided TPPs and mines with backup power sources in the form of more than 200 powerful generators.
Last year, DTEK Energy also put 26 new coal faces into operation, which allowed miners to meet their production targets and provide Ukrainian thermal power plants with enough fuel to operate during the heating season and other peaks in consumption.
According to preliminary data, the company’s investments in Ukrainian coal mining amounted to about UAH 7 billion, compared to UAH 3.8 billion in 2022.
“We went through the most difficult winter and recovered as much as physically possible after such large-scale attacks and in such a short time. And we have already come close to the equator of the current heating season. For our part, we have strengthened the resilience of thermal generation, as it bears the lion’s share of responsibility for balancing the power system during peak consumption,” summarized DTEK Energy CEO Ildar Saleev, as quoted in the press release.
“DTEK Energy provides a closed cycle of electricity generation from coal. The installed capacity in thermal power generation as of January 2022 was 13.3 GW). The company has established a full production cycle in coal mining: coal mining and enrichment, mechanical engineering and maintenance of mine equipment.
“DTEK Energo plans to import about 210,000 tons of coal from Poland for more reliable passage of the autumn-winter period by thermal generation, the energy holding company said in a press release on Wednesday.
Under the fuel import contract, an agreement has been reached on the supply of thermal coal throughout the heating season, starting from September 2023 and until March 2024.
As the company noted, the first coal shipments are expected as early as this week.
“In the conditions of war, unpredictable actions of the enemy and the increased load that the company’s thermal power plants have been carrying in recent months, additional volumes of imported fuel will allow to “back up” and provide an additional margin of safety for a more stable passage of the nearest heating season by thermal generation,” said Ildar Saleev, CEO of DTEK Energo, quoted in the press release.
As reported, DTEK Energy’s thermal power plants have increased their electricity output by 28% over the last four months compared to the same period last year. In turn, in August, when consumption was at record highs for the summer due to the heat wave, power engineers generated 35% more electricity than in August 2022.
In just eight months of this year, DTEK Energy’s thermal power plants supplied almost 9.9 bln kWh of electricity, which is equivalent to the average consumption of about 3.3 mln households during the year.
DTEK Energo’s thermal power plants have increased electricity production by 28% over the past four months compared to the same period in 2022, the energy holding company said in a press release on Wednesday.
“In August, when consumption held at record highs for summer due to the heat wave, power engineers generated 35% more electricity into the energy system than in August last year,” the company said.
In total, in January-August 2023, the company’s thermal power plants released about 9.9 billion kWh of electricity, which is equivalent to the average consumption of about 3.3 million households during the year.
“Power engineers do their best to, on the one hand, repair, restore and prepare the plants for maximum load in the fall and winter period, on the other hand, to reliably maintain and insure the energy system during other peak periods as well. For this purpose, just last week we put two power units of our TPPs into operation after repair, with a total capacity of almost 400 MW,” DTEK Energy CEO Ildar Saleev was quoted in the press release.
DTEK Energy currently operates six of the nine TPPs remaining in the unoccupied territory of Ukraine: Burshtynska, Dobrotvirska and Ladyzhynska TPPs (DTEK Zakhidenergo), Prydniprovska and Kryvorizka TPPs (DTEK Dniproenergo) and Kurakhovska TPP (Vostokenergo LLC).
DTEK plans to invest $120-130m in gas production in 2023, the company’s CEO Maxim Timchenko said. “This year we plan to invest $120-130 mln in production. 70% of these funds are for the development of new fields,” he said in an interview with Forbes Ukraine.
According to him, most of the company’s oil and gas assets have already passed peak production, the natural decline at operating wells is 15-18%.
“The only way to compensate for the decline is to develop new fields. This year we are starting to drill on recently purchased licenses… We plan to start drilling in the Mayorovskoye area in the fourth quarter of 2023,” Timchenko said.
The head of DTEK is convinced that Ukraine has huge prospects for gas production at a depth of 6000-7000 meters. “Thanks to the latest technologies, production at such depths is now paying off,” he specified.
Timchenko also said that at the end of 2022, DTEK’s enterprises produced 2 billion cubic meters of gas. At the same time, at the end of the year they had 0.6 billion cubic meters in underground storage facilities due to a drop in consumption and export ban, which led to liquidity problems throughout the first half of this year.
“But now Naftogaz has started buying back gas after all. I was skeptical about Naftogaz’s ability to buy back gas, but NAK has indeed entered the market and is actively buying back gas. Accordingly, we have liquidity, which allows us to fulfill our investment program,” he said.
At the same time, the head of DTEK believes that the authorities “need to discuss the topic of resuming Ukrainian gas exports with the market, because it has a significant impact on the development of Ukrainian gas production”.
As reported, the companies included in DTEK Naftogaz in November 2022 acquired at an open auction the right to develop two gas fields in the Poltava region: Mayorivska area for UAH 1.102 billion and Birkovsko-Zinkovska area for UAH 211 million.
“DTEK Naftogaz” in 2021 increased gas production by 12% (by 0.22 billion cubic meters) compared to 2020 – up to 2.06 billion cubic meters.
“DTEK was established in 2005 to manage the energy assets of Rinat Akhmetov’s System Capital Management (SCM) group.
DTEK Energy Holding has invested almost UAH 2bn in repairs of its thermal power plants since the beginning of March, DTEK’s executive director Dmytro Sakharuk said.
“Now nine units are under scheduled repairs. We started the repair campaign back in March. We spent almost 2 billion hryvnias to ensure these repairs. Plus we actively extract coal. We have to put 28 faces into operation, 11 of them have already been put into operation and two more faces are to work this month,” – he said during a national telethon.
At the same time Sakharuk said that in general in the power system there are no critical situations that would lead to limitation of consumers, except for point blackouts due to shelling. According to him, under conditions of summer repair campaign of TPP and NPP, reduction of HPS generation with the end of the floods and because of the Kakhovska HPP blowing up, the thermal generation maintains the balance in the power system “plus the imports arrive in certain hours, which overlap the deficit. At the same time he pointed out that the economical consumption of electricity is always necessary, including from the economic point of view, in order to pay less for the resource.
As DTEK noted in its Telegram Channel, in May 2023 the company’s TPPs generated 20% more electricity than in May last year. In total, they have generated more than 5.7 billion kWh of electricity since the beginning of the year, which equals the average annual consumption of about 1.9 million households.
As reported, DTEK energy holding by the beginning of June repaired four power units of its thermal power plants in preparation for the autumn-winter period 2023/2024, which is 15% of the total number of power units planned for repair (a total of 27 power units are planned to be repaired within the repair campaign 2023).
Overall, DTEK needs almost UAH 7 billion to repair equipment damaged and destroyed by the enemy at its thermal power plants.
