Page 4 - RusRPTAug24

4 I Companies & Markets bne August 2024
DTEK is Ukraine's biggest power producer and is scrambling to repair its facilities, 90% of which have been damaged by a relentless Russian barrage of missiles. / DTEK
Ukraine’s biggest private power producer races to recover as winter looms
Timothy Spence in Vienna
Atop DTEK Group executive says companies desperately need access to finance and capital to cope with the devastating destruction Russia has inflicted on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with repeated missile strikes.
Energy is one of the three Ms – the lack of men, money and materiel – that could force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy into early ceasefire talks. Ukraine is facing its biggest energy challenge of the war and a long dark and freezing cold winter as electricity providers struggle to restore production following after Russia has destroyed almost half the country’s thermal generating capacity and continues to hit it even as repairs get under way. Already the country is struggling to cope with rolling blackouts, with some areas in Kyiv getting only a few hours of electricity each day. And the outlook is even bleaker.
Russian missile strikes on major energy facilities over the past four months have created a production deficit of as much as
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30% and this is likely to persist beyond the summer, according to DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company.
Dmytro Sakharuk, executive director of DTEK Group, said at least eight attacks on the firm’s thermal power plants (TPPs) knocked out 90% of its installed capacity of 5 GW and caused damages of between $350-$400mn. DTEK supplies one-quarter of the country’s electricity and runs six of the nine TPPs in Ukraine, though one exposed to front-line combat is not operational.
DTEK is working to restore 35 of its own power units in the worst attacks it has suffered since a series of strikes between October 2022 and February 2023, when ten DTEK generating units were damaged at cost of $110mn. This time around, the company has been forced to mobilise workers from other group units and “concentrate all available financial resources” to restore the damaged TPPs, Sakharuk told bne IntelliNews in an exclusive interview. The situation has taken a heavy toll on the firm's 50,000-strong workforce.