YALTA - Ukraine has made major progress in diversification of energy sources this year by launching gas import from Europe at a large scale, increasing its own production and investing in renewable energy sources, Deputy Prime Minister Yuriy Boyko said on Sept. 20.
He said that Ukraine has also finished
technical negotiations to build an LNG terminal in Odesa and is close
to finalizing product sharing agreement with ExxonMobil and Chevron,
two international giants who won tenders last year to extract gas
offshore and from shale in western Ukraine.
“We also have ambitions plans for the
next year,” Boyko said at the Yalta European Strategy conference.
Ukraine has traditionally depended
heavily on Russian energy sources. In 2012, Ukraine imported
32.9 billion cubic meters of Russian gas in 2012. The nation’s
total consumption stood at 54.7 billion cubic meters, according to
the energy ministry data. Ukraine seeks to cut down this year’s
import to 24 billion cubic meters to reduce its prohibitive gas bill.
Ukraine pays about $450 per 1,000 billion cubic meters of imported
Russian gas at the moment.
Boyko’s comment come on the day when a
regional council of Ivano-Frankivsk voted to approve a product
sharing agreement with Chevron, moving the company closer to
concluding a multi-billion dollar deal to extract gas from shale in
Oleska field, which stretches across Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk region.
To finalize the deal, the agreement
also needs to be approved by the Lviv regional councils. Both
councils initially resisted the drive for shale gas because of
environmental concerns and because local communities would get little
financial benefit from the deal. Eduard Stavytskiy, the energy
minister, said he was hoping that the signing will take place in late
october-early November.
Mykhailo Vyshyvaniuk, head of the
regional council, hailed the deal for its potential to contribute to
energy independence of Ukraine. “Ukraine will receive, primarily
energy independence which is directly linked to the political one,”
he said, according to the council website. He also said he was
expecting to get many new jobs in the region and a “high culture of
production.”
Boyko said the government’s policy of
diversification of energy sources is already bearing fruit. Ukraine
imported 1billion cubic meters of gas from Europe by reversing its
pipe, and plans to import another 1 billion cubic meters by year’s
end.
He said domestic production also grew
by 1 billion cubic meters, and the amount of renewable energy grew by
four times this year. “If we maintain this speed, we will receive
next year the volume of energy equivalent to two nuclear blocks,”
he said.
Boyko said that Ukraine also concluded
technical negotiations on a liquefied gas terminal in Odesa, and
received a commercial proposal from a company that will bring the
terminal to the Black Sea.
Vladyslav Kaskiv, head of the
National Agency for Investment and National Projects, said the
company, Accelerate Power, “confirmed full technical ability and
feasibility of placing an LNG platform in the Black Sea.”
Kaskiv had said in March that a
floating terminal might start working in Ukraine next year.
