Ukraine has increased gas inventories in underground storage by 47.3% since the end of the heating season, according to operational data from Ukrtransgaz.
The inventories amounted to 11.929 billion cubic meters on July 8, up from 8.1 billion cubic meters on March 22.
The current inventories are up by 21.5% YoY (9.821 billion cubic meters), 2.1% less than on July 8, 2015 (12.188 billion cubic meters) and 17.7% less than on July 8, 2014 (14.486 billion cubic meters).
Ukraine injected 389 million cubic meters of gas into underground storage from July 1 through July 8, 2017 (48.63 million cubic meters a day on average), compared with 49.88 million cubic meters a day on average in June and 51.86 million cubic meters a day on average in May.
If Ukraine injects about 50 million cubic meters a day into underground storage in July-September, it would enter the 2017-2018 heating season with about 16 billion cubic meters in storage. It had 14.7 billion cubic meters in storage when the 2016-2017 heating season began in mid-October 2016.
At the end of February Yuriy Vitrenko, the director for business development of Naftogaz Ukrainy, forecast that as far as gas storage is concerned, the company would pursue the same conservative plans for the upcoming heating season as it did for the 2016-2017 heating season.
Ukraine imported 34.958 million cubic meters of gas on July 8, of which 23.359 million cubic meters from Slovakia, 7.395 million cubic meters from Hungary and 4.204 million cubic meters from Poland. In general, Ukraine imported 278.8 million cubic meters of gas from Europe on July 1 through July 8.
Gas production in Ukraine on July 8 was 56.344 million cubic meters, of which Ukrgazvydobuvannia produced 41.804 million cubic meters, Ukrnafta – 2.656 million cubic meters and other companies – 11.884 million cubic meters. Overall production on July 1 through July 8 was 449.7 billion cubic meters.
Transit via Ukraine’s gas transport system was 2.101 billion cubic meters in the period of July 1-8 or 262.6 million cubic meters a day on average. (Interfax-Ukraine/Business World Magazine)
