Ukraine pumped 17 billion cubic meters of natural gas into its underground gas storage facilities, the state-owned Naftogaz gas company reported on Aug. 2.
According to Naftogaz, the mentioned amount is the necessary minimum for Ukraine to safely enter the heating season. The company was initially expected to pump the required amount by mid-October.
“According to our plan, the amount of gas stored will be even higher,” said Yuriy Vitrenko, head of Naftogaz.
The amount of gas stored by Naftogaz as of Aug. 1 exceeded the total reserves for the 2017-2018 heating season which stood at 16.8 billion cubic meters.
The next year’s heating season, Ukraine was able to store 17.1 billion cubic meters.
During the 2020-2021 heating season, Ukraine stored a record 28.3 billion cubic meters of gas into the country’s storage facilities.
The news comes days after Ukraine lost its six-year-long battle to stop Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline from being completed.
On July 21, the U.S. State Department signed an agreement with Germany allowing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to be completed.
Russia and Ukraine have a five-year agreement through 2024 that guarantees Russia will transport no less than 40 billion cubic meters through Ukraine each year and must pay Ukraine at least $7.2 billion over the course of the contract.
Losing the leverage of being a gas-transit country Ukraine is expected to have a harder time buying natural gas elsewhere.
Naftogaz stopped buying gas directly from Russia in November 2015. The company began buying Russian gas from the European market. Ukraine’s gas monopolist bought it from Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary in a procedure known as “reverse flow.”
