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One impact of Russia’s ‘dirty oil’ scandal may be to breathe new life into Ukraine’s 674 km Odesa-Brody pipeline. The oil pipeline was built in 2002 to carry Azeri and Kazakh oil north from the Black Sea to Brody, a junction in Lviv region with the east-west Druzhba pipeline. In practice, the pipeline flow was reversed, taking Russian oil south to Odesa. But, as Sergei Kuyun, director of A-95 Consulting Group, writes in DT.UA, loss of confidence in Russian oil supplies could lead to the Odesa-Brody supplying Central Asian oil to Ukraine, Belarus and Poland. Five years from now, Belarus is to start paying market prices for Russian oil. As a result, Belarus is studying alternate sources of supply, either from Lithuania or Ukraine.
Two US senators plan to introduce a bill targeting Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany of Russian gas major Gazprom, Bloomberg reported on May 14 citing sources familiar with the plans. Now more troubles could be in sight for the project from the US, as Texas Republican Ted Cruz and New Hampshire Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, both members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, reportedly drafted a bill that would target vessels that lay the pipeline and would deny visas to executives from companies linked to those vessels.
Naftogaz of Ukraine has filed a complaint with the EU Commission about the anti-competitive behavior of Russian Gazprom, the company’s director Yuriy Vitrenko said on May 6. “In this way, we will be able to make natural gas cheaper for Ukrainians,” he wrote in a Facebook post, explaining this will become possible by providing access to Ukraine’s gas transit system to EU- based buyers, as well as to Russian independent suppliers, by enabling gas to be traded at the Russian-Ukrainian border. Currently, Gazprom is selling all its natural gas passing though Ukraine exclusively on the border between Ukraine and EU countries. If Naftogaz’s new initiative will force Gazprom to sell its natural gas to EU-based traders on Russian-Ukrainian border, this will become a real breakthrough. In such case, Naftogaz will not need to deal with Gazprom at all anymore, enabling EU-based traders to purchase Russian gas and transport it through Ukrainian territory themselves, as well as selling such gas to Ukrainian consumers. In this way, indeed, natural gas will become much more cheaper for Ukraine, which has adopted the policy – amid Russian aggression – to buy it from intermediaries on the EU market, despite the gas originating in Russia.
Natural gas stocks in Ukraine's underground storage facilities (USFs) have increased by 15.1%, or by 1.34mn cubic meters (mcm), to 10.07bn cubic meters (bcm) since April 5, when Ukraine started the season of pumping natural gas into its reserves. As of May 11, 2019, gas reserves in the country's USFs were 18% up from 8.5 bcm reported as of May 11, 2018, while the USFs were filled by 32.4%, according to the state-run gas transport system operator Ukrtransgaz. In particular, 53.38 mcm of gas was injected into the storage facilities on May 11 alone. Ukraine on April 5 started the season of pumping natural gas into its underground storage facilities. By the start of the 2018-2019 heating season, Ukraine had accumulated 17.2 bcm of gas in its underground storage facilities, which was a record high natural gas stock over the past six years. Ukrtransgaz operates 12 underground gas storages (USFs) with a total storage capacity of about 31 bcm. The USFs are an integral part of Ukraine's gas supply system and gas transit through its territory. The company is also the operator of trunk gas pipelines carrying gas from Russia to the EU. Ukrtransgaz is wholly owned by NJSC Naftogaz of Ukraine.
58 UKRAINE Country Report June 2019 www.intellinews.com