Page 14 - FSUOGM Week 02 2021

FSUOGM PIPELINES & TRANSPORT FSUOGM

Source: GTSOU
website.

Explosion tears through

Ukrainian gas pipeline

UKRAINE AN explosion has ripped through a major pipe- the EU. But supplies were subsequently rerouted
line in Ukraine’s central Poltava region that and there were no disruptions.
This is the second pumps Russian gas to Europe, authorities have The latest blast comes after Gazprom cut
pipeline explosion in said. Russian transit volumes are unaffected, Ukrainian gas transits by around a third in early
Ukraine in less than however, following a steep cut in flows by Russia’s January to 130mn cubic metres per day, accord-
four months. state-owned Gazprom earlier this month. ing to a statement made by GTSOU’s CEO,
The incident occurred at the Urengoy-Pom- Sergiy Makogon, on social media on January 6.
ary-Uzhgorod pipeline near the town of Lubny The reduction was made despite a recovery in
at 15:50 on January 9, knocking out a 30-metre European gas demand in recent months.
section of pipe, Ukraine’s transmission system Gazprom sent almost a third less gas to its
operator GTSOU said in a statement. An inves- European customers last year via Ukraine, with
tigation is ongoing, although authorities have shipments amounting to 55.8bn cubic metres, or
identified a leak as a preliminary cause, dismiss- around 153 mcm per day. This is a 38% reduction
ing suggestions of external interference. from volumes in 2019.
No one was injured by the blast, although The decline was hardly a surprise. Gazprom
gas supplies were disrupted to more than 3,000 reached a new transit deal with Ukrainian
households and industrial consumers in Lubny authorities in late 2019, reducing the minimum
and several other settlements in the Poltava amount of gas transit it had to pay for to 65
region. GTSOU said supplies had been restored bcm in 2020. The company’s sales to Europe
at 10:40 on January 10 by delivering gas using also slumped last year owing to coronavirus
alternative routes. (COVID-19) lockdowns and various other
A team of 30 workers are on site to replace the factors. In addition, it diverted some gas to the
damaged pipe section, the operator said, without TurkStream pipeline that runs under the Black
specifying when re-commissioning was likely. Sea to Turkey, which was commissioned at the
The Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline start of 2020.
was built in the late 1980s and transports gas Under its contract with Kyiv, Gazprom only
from key fields in Western Siberia across Ukraine has to pay for 40 bcm per year of gas transit
to central Europe. It is also used by local produc- through Ukraine between 2021 and 2025. The
ers in the Poltava region. company had hoped to be pumping significant
This marks the second pipeline explosion in volumes of gas through the Nord Stream 2 by
Ukraine in less than four months. In September now, but the pipeline’s launch has been delayed
last year, part of the Kyiv-Western Ukraine-1 because of US sanctions. S&P Global Platts Ana-
pipeline exploded in the Kyiv region. That pipe- lytics now assumes the pipeline, originally due to
line pumps gas from eastern Ukrainian fields to start up at the start of 2020, will come on stream
storage facilities near the country’s border with in the third quarter of this year. ™

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