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It also announced a new organisational struc- gas supplier Naftogaz a 30-year licence to explore
ture, in which low-carbon energy will be one of and develop a section of the Black Sea, without
four main segments. The others are industrial, a tender. The country’s Cabinet of Ministers
consisting of refining, trading and wholesale and approved a resolution clearing Naftogaz for the
gas trading; customer, which includes mobility, project on November 25, with Natural Resources
retail and energy solutions; and upstream. Minister Roman Abramovsky suggesting that
The plan is to expand Repsol’s renewable the firm partner with international investors.
energy generation capacity by 500 MW each Naftogaz has been lobbying for access to the
year between 2020 and 2025, up to 7.5 GW, and Black Sea shelf to help it expand production and
then double it to 15 GW by 2030. reduce Ukraine’s need for imported gas, but Naftogaz has
Achieving these targets will require €1.4bn in authorities previously wanted to find offshore been lobbying
annual investments by 2025, or eight times more developers through an auction.
than Repsol spent on renewables last year. But Ukraine’s subsoil service held a contest for access to the
the company also expects to generate eight times for rights to 9,500 square km of the Black Sea,
more in EBITDA from the business in five years’ known as the Dolphin contract area, last year. Black Sea shelf
time, or €331mn. A London-based company called Trident
Repsol will still invest more in upstream Resources with no past experience of oil and gas to help it expand
activities than in renewables during the period, exploration was selected as the winner. But the production and
projecting its total exploration and production government cancelled the award the following
spend at €8bn. But this only represents €1.6bn month, saying it wanted an investor with experi- reduce Ukraine’s
in annual investment, compared with €2.4bn in ence and technical capability.
2019 and €2.6bn per year in its earlier 2018-2020 The auction had been due to be restaged, with need for imported
strategic plan. investors given more time to submit their bids,
Instead of targeting growth, Repsol’s focus but this plan was put on hold in light of the coro- natural gas
will also move to maintaining oil and gas output. navirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
It projects average production at 650,000 barrels Naftogaz has said it will invest $40mn in its
of oil equivalent per day (boepd) over the period, first year of work on the Ukrainian Black Sea
which is the same as its forecast for 2020. shelf, which it estimates to hold 1-2 trillion cubic
Italian gas grid operator Snam also metres of gas. It will, however, first need to drill
announced a new strategy this week, similarly to find out how much gas is really out there and
setting clean energy as a cornerstone of its invest- how much can be recovered commercially.
ment plans. The main focus will be hydrogen Over in Russia, both Gazprom and Tatneft
production and transportation. reported their third-quarter results on Novem-
ber 30. While Gazprom swung to a net loss of
If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping RUB251bn ($3.3bn), Tatneft stayed in the black,
Europe’s oil and gas sector then please click here for delivering a net income of $0.49bn.
NewsBase’s EurOil Monitor. Gazprom blamed its reversal on a
RUB464.3bn foreign exchange loss relating to
FSU: Ukraine’s Black Sea ops the revaluation of its foreign currency-denom-
Ukraine’s government has granted state-owned inated debts.

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