Foreign companies are again using underground gas storage (UGS) facilities in Ukraine, despite the war, although the volumes of such storage are still small due to gas shortages in Europe, Yuriy Vitrenko, Board Chairman of NJSC Naftogaz Ukrainy, has said.
“There are already foreign companies that, starting from April, under the conditions of war, still take risks and store gas in our storage facilities,” he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
The Naftogaz head recalled that in the first month of the war, Ukraine suspended such an opportunity, but then reopened storage facilities for nonresidents.
“So far, there are relatively small [volumes of storage by nonresidents]. The question is simply that there is a certain shortage of gas in Europe,” Vitrenko explained.
According to him, this trust is due to the fact that Ukraine is a reliable partner, unlike Russia.
“We just had a meeting of world economic leaders, they discussed energy security, and the Polish Minister of Energy, Anna Moskwa, says bluntly: look, we had contracts, Bulgaria had contracts, but the Russians simply do not fulfill them. Therefore, it is not worth taking into account any agreements and papers signed by Russia, unlike the agreements with Ukraine,” the Naftogaz Board Chairman said.
As reported, Ukraine actively offers European companies to use Ukrainian UGS facilities. The customs warehouse regime allows natural gas to be stored in UGS facilities in Ukraine for three years without paying taxes and customs duties during its further transportation from the country.
In January of this year, gas storage operator Ukrtransgaz, a subsidiary of Naftogaz, indicated that the number of nonresident companies in its customer portfolio had grown 8 times over the past three years to 111 companies representing 27 countries from three continents: Europe, North America and Asia.
Ukraine boosted its natural gas stocks in underground gas storage facilities (UGS) by 23.28 billion cubic meters (bcm), to 21.026 bcm from April 4 to October 13, 2019, according to JSC Ukrtransgaz.
Interfax-Ukraine’s estimates show that this volume exceeds the inventory indicator as of October 13, 2018 by 26.4%, that as of October 13, 2017 by 25.5% and of October 13, 2016 by 42.7%.
Some 594.48 million cubic meters (mcm) was pumped into the country’s storage facilities on October 1 through October 13, which was 45.7 million cubic meters (mcm) per day on the average. The average daily amount in September was 72.5 mcm, it was 77.5 mcm in August, 74.4 mcm in July, 71.9 mcm in June, and 62.9 mcm in May.
Some 44.5 mcm of natural gas was pumped into the country’s UGS facilities on October 13, 2019, alone, while gas import totaled 60.4 mcm and domestic production was 54.9 mcm.
Earlier, Chairman of Executive Board of Naftogaz Ukrainy Andriy Kobolev said that the company planned to pump additional volumes of natural gas into the Ukrainian underground storage facilities in the event that Russia’s Gazprom ceases gas transit through the country in 2020.
As was reported, during the heating season from November 6, 2018, to April 4, 2019, Ukraine’s gas stocks in the UGS facilities shrank by 8.45 bcm (from 17.195 bcm to 8.745 bcm).
Ukrtransgaz, fully owned by Naftogaz Ukrainy, operates a system of gas pipelines and 12 underground gas storages in the country. Their total capacity is 31 bcm.
