Ukraine’s April Imports Increase by 77% Year-on-Year

Ukraine increased by 77% its April imports with respect to the same period of 2013. The country imported 2.6 billion cubic meters. 

The data released by Ukrtransgaz are consistent with an article recently published by Bloomberg. Last month, the news agency reported that Ukraine has been boosting natural gas imports from Russia to the highest levels in 10 weeks after Russia’s President Vladimir Putin gave the country one month to resume payments or to start prepaying for the fuel.

According to a study by Pöyry, European intervention could help the country, but not solve all its problems. In this context, gas storage could play an important role before an eventual cut-off. 

‘In order to provide some support for Ukrainian gas demand, we have assumed some reverse flow through interconnections with Slovakia, Poland and Hungary. However this would not be nearly sufficient to meet Ukrainian gas demand and some interruption should be expected,’ reads the report “The Ukraine Crisis - could gas supply disruptions affect Europe?”.