At the beginning of the heating season, which traditionally begins in October, Ukrainian storage facilities were not receiving enough gas. Ukraine’s Naftogaz failed to meet the government’s plan to pump fuel. At the same time, foreign traders further reduced their reserves in Ukraine.
According to GIE, as of October 1, 12.9 billion cubic meters of gas had accumulated in Ukraine’s gas storage facilities. This is 300 million cubic meters less than the plan set by the government for Ukraine’s Naftogaz.
“To minimize any energy risk, we must accumulate 13.2 billion cubic meters of gas by October 1, 2024.” — reported the national company in July.
In the first half of September it became clear that the plan to create reserves even at record levels would not be fulfilled. Current domestic production is not enough and European traders are only reducing their reserves in the country’s underground gas storage facilities. If in the last preparatory season they pumped 3 billion cubic meters into the storage facilities, this year they took away 82 million cubic meters more than they pumped. In September the difference was -44 million cubic meters. This time Poland urgently needed blue fuel, as preventive maintenance work was being carried out in Norway and the Baltic gas pipeline stopped working. More than 300 million cubic meters entered the country from and through Ukraine.
As a result, the gas reserves of European traders storing fuel in Ukraine under the “customs warehouse” regime amount, according to Ukraine’s GTS operator, to 1.2 billion cubic meters.
Obviously, a warm October will allow Naftogaz to continue pumping into storage. It was previously known that the national company plans to import 600 million cubic meters through a loan from the EBRD. True, Naftogaz itself stated that there would be no imports, since the volumes would be delivered to Ukraine in “customs warehouse” mode and would be used only in case of emergency.
In recent years, due to the closure of companies and the departure of millions of Ukrainians abroad, gas consumption in Ukraine has decreased sharply. However, as the previous heating season showed, its consumption still remains at a fairly high level. And even more fuel may be needed, as there are almost no coal-fired power plants left after retaliatory attacks by the Russian military, and thermal power plants have become one of the four main sources of generation besides nuclear , hydroelectric and green. .
