Ukraine Plans To Pass 2023/24 Heating Season Without Natural Gas Imports - Chernyshov

Ukraine plans to pass the 2023-2024 heating season without natural gas imports.

The chairman of the board of the Naftogaz of Ukraine National Joint Stock Company Oleksii Chernyshov announced this in an interview for the NV publication, Ukrainian News Agency reports.

"In 2023, we plan to produce 13.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas. We also have certain expectations from private miners. This year, Ukrainian natural gas will be enough to pass the 2023-2024 heating season without import. But there are military risks. Therefore, Naftogaz joined the Aggregate EU joint natural gas procurement platform. That is, if there is not enough fuel in the negative development of events, we will be able to quickly order the volumes we need," he said.

According to Chernyshov, on April 17, natural gas injection began in underground storage facilities.

"Now we have a 9.5 billion cubic meters resource in the USF. In terms of preparing for the heating season, we are working to increase our own production. We systematically and transparently buy natural gas from Ukrainian private producers on the Ukrainian Energy Exchange. By doing this, we encourage companies to also produce more natural gas. The procurement of fuel from private citizens has been talked about a lot before, but few have done so. And we already buy natural gas, and these volumes are growing every day. So, during the first procurements, we purchased about 30 million cubic meters of natural gas. This is just the beginning," he said.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, at the beginning of the autumn-winter season, the government plans to create natural gas reserves in underground natural gas storage facilities (USF) at the level of 14.7 billion cubic meters.