You're reading: Poroshenko says US energy secretary to visit Kyiv in August

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said he expects U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry to visit Ukraine this August.

“The first agreement of the negotiations with Energy Secretary Perry is that Secretary Perry will visit Ukraine in August. We have a lot to talk about,” Poroshenko said in an interview with Ukrainian television channels broadcast on June 25 evening.

According to the head of the Ukrainian state, they will discuss American companies’ participation in purchasing Ukrainian state-owned energy companies.

“Secondly, you know that after the seizure of Ukrainian enterprises in the occupied territory we refused to buy coal from the occupied territories and for the sake of transparency of this market we agreed to purchase American coal from Pennsylvania at competitive prices. We will have guaranteed supplies of at least 2 million tonnes of coal. All the conditions have been created, now contracts should be concluded,” the president explained.

He also noted that during the talks the issues of energy security of Ukraine were discussed. “We are significantly increasing the share of American suppliers of Westinghouse nuclear fuel to Ukraine, I hope that we will be able to up this share to 55 percent. We continue the construction of a plant for spent nuclear fuel and thus we are getting off the hook of spent nuclear fuel, which Russia thinks it has us on,” Poroshenko said.