REUTERS
There are now almost 16 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas in Ukraine's storage facilities.
Chief Commercial Officer of NJSC Naftogaz of Ukraine Yuriy Vitrenko says there are enough natural gas reserves in Ukrainian underground storage facilities (USFs) to enter the 2018/2019 heating season.
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"There are now almost 16 billion cubic meters of gas in the storage facilities. This is enough to make it through the winter comfortably," Vitrenko said on September 25.
The heating season is expected to start on October 15, he said. Vitrenko predicts some 16.1 bcm of gas should be accumulated in the USFs, adding that 16.8 bcm was stored in the facilities as of the same date last year.
Such a difference in the reserves is due to the fact that Ukraine completed the past heating season with a rather high amount of ending stocks, that is 7.4 bcm of gas with the minimum required volume being 5 bcm.
As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukraine entered 2018 with 14.7 bcm of gas being stored in its USFs, which was the largest gas stock as of the beginning of the year in the past five years.
UNIAN memo. NJSC Naftogaz of Ukraine is the largest state-run vertically integrated oil and gas holding whose subsidiaries account for about 90% of oil and gas production in Ukraine. Naftogaz develops oil and gas fields, produces crude oil and natural gas. Its core business is also transportation and trade in fuel through its own network of filling stations.