Ukraine Ups Gas Transit, EU Imports, Production
The transit of Russian gas across Ukraine has increased by about a quarter year on year during the period from January to September 2017, Ukrtransgaz announced Oct.2.
"Ukraine has pumped about 70.4bn m3 of Russian gas in nine months, which indicates 23.5% growth year-on-year. The indicator reached the maximum volume since 2008,” it said.
Russian gas transit via Ukraine was 82.2bn m3 in the whole of 2016, about 23% more than 2015.
Ukraine stopped importing Russian gas for its own needs in November 2015; its gas imports from the European Union correspondingly increased by 70% in the first nine months of 2017 to reach 10.7bn m3.
Gas production in Ukraine during January-September 2017 also increased by 3.6% to 15.491bn m3, Ukrtransgaz reported. The figure for the whole of 2016 was 19.987bn m3, about 0.5% more than 2015.
About 8.5bn m3 of gas has also been injected into Ukrainian underground gas storage facilities (UGS) in January-September 2017, an increase year on year of 44%, and the total stored gas in UGS reached 16.4bn m3. The figure in 1H17 was 11.6bn m3. Ukraine has five UGSs with 32bn m3 capacity.
Dalga Khatinoglu, Ilham Shaban