Transit of Russian gas via Ukraine is at its peak for 7 years

The volume of the Russian has transit via Ukraine has increased in January-October by 18.5% comparing to the same period last year and reached 77.4 bn cubic meters, Ukrtransgaz informs in its Facebook account.

According to the company, this is the maximum volume for the last seven years.

Meanwhile, the gas transit in October dropped by 1.2 bn cubic meters comparing to last October.

Since the beginning of the year, Ukraine increased gas import almost by 1.5 times (by 49.6%) comparing to the same period in 2016. The amount of imported gas totaled 11.8 bn cubic meters of gas.

“For 700 days already Ukraine has not been importing gas from Russia. All the volumes are coming from the EU countries,” they in Ukrtransgaz stressed. According to the company, 9.1 bn cubic meters of gas has been pumped into underground gas storage facilities in Ukraine, the whole amount of gas in the facilities is now 17 bn cubic meters. In October, Ukraine stopped pumping the gas into storage facilities and started pumping it out (138.8 mn cubic meters last month, which is twice less than in October 2016).

EADaily needs to remind that Ukraine stopped importing the Russian gas in November 2015. Since then, it has been receiving only reverse-supply gas (which is actually the gas from Gazprom, but delivered via third countries).

Within nine months of the year, Ukraine’s revenues from the gas transit were about $930 mn. The current gas-transit contract with Gazprom expires in 2019. In 2015, Gazprom deputy chair of the board Alexander Medvedev announced that the holding will stop the gas transit via Ukraine and use the Turkish Stream for this purpose. In Sept 2017, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said that Moscow was ready to discuss the cooperation in maintaining the transit with Kiev, if the delivery of the Russian gas via Ukraine is cheaper than via the Turkish Stream of Nord Stream 2.