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.
