In 2026, Ukrnafta JSC will allocate an additional 2.5 billion hryvnia to protect its production infrastructure from shelling by Russia, which has intensified, said Bogdan Kukura, the company’s chairman of the board.
“We have shifted our priorities toward protecting facilities and ensuring the safety of equipment through underground construction. Therefore, this year we are allocating an additional 2.5 billion hryvnia to protect (production – IF-U) infrastructure; this is a huge investment,” he said in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
According to him, the drilling plan for this year calls for 15 wells to be completed. At the same time, Kukura suggested that, thanks to a balanced drilling program, there is a possibility this figure could increase. (Last year, the company set a drilling record, bringing the total to 25 wells – IF-U).
“A total of 11 wells have already been drilled since the beginning of the year—including those drilled jointly with Ukrgazvydobuvannya. But for us, it is not so much the quantitative figure that matters as, first and foremost, economic efficiency, production rate, and the contribution to increasing output,” Kukura noted.
He noted that the collaboration between “Ukrnafta” and “Ukrgazdobycha” has proven effective, and together the companies have drilled three high-yield wells, each with a depth ranging from 4.5 to 5.6 km.
“This project has confirmed the effectiveness of combining the expertise of state-owned companies, so we plan to continue developing this kind of cooperation in the future,” emphasized the CEO of Ukrnafta.
Kukura also noted that the company has suspended the UKRNAFTA network expansion program in the east due to constant shelling by Russia, which “would render all modernization efforts futile,” and is currently focused on protecting its facilities there. At the same time, he noted that in the west of the country, UKRNAFTA is working as hard as possible to continue modernizing gas stations and is allocating part of the funds received from commercial operations toward this effort.
“Overall, we are trying to maintain a balanced allocation of revenue from both segments—production and commercial operations,” Kukura emphasized.
As previously reported, in this interview, Kukura stated that JSC “Ukrnafta’s” oil production losses for the first half of 2026 amounted to 150,000 metric tons—this includes both physical losses, i.e., oil that burned as a result of shelling, and the volume of oil not produced due to operational shutdowns. According to him, oil losses in the first half of 2026 significantly exceed the figures for the same period of the previous year.
In the first seven months of 2026, Russia destroyed 37 gas stations belonging to the Naftogaz Group; some of them were successfully restored, but the rest sustained critical damage and ceased operations.
