Auctions will be held in the next six months for 44 exploration and production sites with total “projected reserves” of more than 1 trillion cubic meters of gas

Auctions will be held in the next six months for 44 exploration and production sites with total “projected reserves” of more than 1 trillion cubic meters of gas, the head of the State Geology and Mining Service promised Rada members Monday. Oleg Kirilyuk told a Rada meeting that auctions will be held for 14 sites on the Black Sea shelf and 30 on land, in eight regions. The regions and licenses are: Chernihiv – 1; Kharkiv – 4; Sumy – 4; Ivano-Frankivsk – 4; Dnipropetrovsk – 4; Odesa – 1; and Zakarpattya – 1. With Ukraine’s gas production stagnant in recent years, the Service has been criticized for auctioning only 43 licenses in four years.