REUTERS
Gas stocks in Ukraine's underground storage facilities grew to 16.504 billion cubic meters (bcm), ZN.UA writes with reference to the Gas Storage Europe (GSE).
Now the facilities are filled by 53.33%.
The largest stocks, which total 7.940 bcm of gas, are stored in Bilche-Volitsko-Uhersk facilities, which are filled by 46.57%.
Ukraine has recently been pumping gas into storage facilities at an accelerated pace – the daily amount of gas injected into underground storage facilities exceeds 80 million cubic meters (mcm).
The replenishment of gas stocks became active after Ukraine resumed gas purchases from Russia's Gazprom on October 12 under a new Winter Package. The gas is pumped into underground storage facilities to ensure Russian gas transit supplies to Europe in winter.
As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukraine boosted gas imports from Europe by four times in January-September 2015 to 8.8 bcm from 2.2 bcm in 2014. At the same time, Russian gas shipments decreased by 3.7 times to 3.8 bcm from 13.9 bcm. Thus, gas imports from Russia account for a third of imports (30.2% against 86.3% in the nine months of 2014). Most of the gas (69.8%) was bought by Ukraine from Europe (a mere 13.7% January-September 2014).
The Winter Package of gas accords initialed by the parties to the agreement foresees that Ukraine will spend $500 million to buy 2 bcm of gas directly from Gazprom, which is to be pumped into underground storage facilities. Moscow in turn will lower the price of gas for Ukraine for the next two quarters to the level fixed for neighboring European countries, and the price for Ukraine should not be lower than the one on the European market, so that Ukraine buys gas directly from Russia rather than purchases it in Europe. The agreed price of Russian gas for Ukraine from October 1 to the end of 2015 is $227 per 1,000 cubic meters without calorific value differentiation, and $232 if calorific value is taken into account.