Energy

Thursday, June 3

Responding to a world surge in metals prices, Ukraine’s dominant metals industry hiked production during the first five months of this year, compared to January-May 2020. Ukrmetalurgprom, the producer association, reports: pig iron +9.1%; steel +8.3%; rolled products: +7.9%.

France’s EuroCape inaugurated yesterday the first 80 MW stage of what could be a large scale 500 MW wind farm on the Azov coast of Zaporizhia , reports the regional government. Noting “10 years of bureaucratic struggle” the report hailed the commissioning of the first 27 wind turbines of a planned number of 167. If completed, the EuroCape p...

Wednesday, June 2

Abandoned coal mines across the Donbas are filling with water, threatening drinking water quality on both sides of the separation line , Veronika Melkozerova reports for NBC News from Toretsk, in government-controlled Donetsk. As water fills the mines, methane is pushed to the surface triggering explosions, she reports. Of the 121 wo...

Ukraine is negotiating with investors to build a new oil refinery and will be a partner in the project, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, Deputy Presidential Chief of staff, tells Interfax-Ukraine. Ukraine’s only working oil refinery, in Kremenchuk, cannot make up for this month’s shortfall in gasoline imports from Be...

Tuesday, June 1

Belarus is cutting its shipments of premium unleaded gasoline by 80% for June, Serhii Kuyun, director of the A-95 consulting group, writes on Facebook. Ukraine will get 10,000 tons, instead of the normal 50,000. Ukrainian traders have bought all free gasoline from Lithuania’s Or...

Behind the Belarus cuts are not politics, but domestic needs, writes UNIAN. Anna Bredikhina wrote that Russia’s Rosneft and Surgutneftegaz are refusing to supply oil to Naftan, Belarus’ second refinery because of US sanctions that hit Naftan on Thursday. Brediki...

Ukraine’s electricity consumption is forecast to fall by one quarter during the 2020s , predicts GlobalData, a London-based data provider. During the last decade, electricity consumption fell by 9%, to 127.3 terawatts, GlobalData says. Looking ahead, Pavan Vyakaranam, a GlobalData exec...

Svetlana Zalishchuk, the former journalist and Rada member for the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, has become an international affairs advisor to Naftogaz CEO Yuriy Vitrenko . Targeting Nord Stream 2, she told the oil and gas company’s press department: “Ukraine still needs to win its battle against the Russian geopolitical pipeline. We are currently working on several sc...

Yulia Svyridenko, Deputy Presidential Chief of staff, has been chosen by the Cabinet of Ministers to represent the government on the Naftogaz Supervisory Board. She succeeds Robert Bensh, a Houston oil and gas executive. At the same Cabinet session, thre...

Monday, May 31

Oil traders worry that Belarus will cut off supplies of A-95 gasoline to Ukraine this week, enkorr, or energy correspondent news site, reports from Kyiv. Belarus supplies half of Ukraine’s needs for this premium unleaded gasoline. “Today we were advised that there would be no supplies of the...

Serhii Kuyun, director of the A-95 consulting group, wrote on Facebook Friday that the cut off is starting. “The worst decision that Belarusians could have taken in the current situation is to close the supply of A-95 gasoline to Ukraine, where their product has 50% of the market,” he wrote, noting that Ukr...

DTEK’s Tiligulska wind power project, with a capacity of 126 MW, is under construction this summer and should produce power next year , DTEK reports. Located in southwest Mykolaiv, the project is largely financed with money from a green Eurobond that DTEK issued in the fall of 2019. If the government catches up with overdue payments...

Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems A/S is making the turbines for the DTEK project and for a project by YUFB Engineering in Ternopil. Located about 150 km east of Lviv city, the Ternopil project is to be 25 MW. Vestas says it has 18% of the world wind turbine market. The 6 MW turbines it is making for the DTEK project are some of wo...

“US diplomatic signals go unheard in Ukraine, ” headlines an Atlantic Council blog by Oleksiy Honcharuk, President Zelensky’s first Prime Minister. Alarmed over the government’s bypassing of the Naftogaz Supervisory Board to switch CEOs, US Secre...

Friday, May 28

Wednesday’s decision to ban electricity imports from Russia and Belarus will accelerate Ukraine’s integration with the European ENTSO-E system, Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko told German Ambassador to Ukraine Anka Feldhusen, the ministry reported yesterday. This synchronization is to take place by the end of 2023. Created in 2008, ENTSO-...

“The official goal to which we are moving — and working hard — is to cut off from the power grids of the Russian Federation and Belarus in 2023 , and integrate into the European one, to unite our power grids,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said last night on 1+1 TV’s ‘Right to Power’ talk show.

Thursday, May 27

Ukraine is banning the import of electricity from Belarus and Russia for four months, until Oct. 1. “We remember our experience last winter,” Valeriy Tarasiuk, chairman of the National Energy and Utilities Regulatory Commission of Ukraine yesterday told a public meeting. After power stations ran sho...

President Biden justified his decision to waive sanctions against the company building the Nord Stream 2, saying Tuesday: “It’s almost completely finished.” Bloomberg reported the president saying: “To go ahead and impose sanctions now, I think, is counter-productive in terms of our Europe.”

Seeing Nord Stream 2 as a serious threat to Naftogaz, Yuriy Vitrenko, the new CEO is shaking up his international strategy team, the company has reported. “To find new tools to counter the Nord Stream 2 project,” Vitrenko has hired Myron Wasylyk, former Ukraine director general of PBN Hill + Knowlton Strategies, as an internati...

At the same time, Olena Zerkal, advisor to the board chair of Naftogaz, has resigned , NV has reported. A former deputy foreign minister, Zerkal was appointed 18 months ago to succeed Vitrenko in pursuing legal suits against Russia. Late last month, Vitrenko returned to Naftogaz, sign...

Wednesday, May 26

Responding to the world surge in iron and steel prices, Ukraine’s pig iron production rose 9% to 7.1 million tons during the first four months of this year, compared to January-April 2020. Ukraine slightly outpace world growth of 8.6% and put Ukraine in 10th place worldwide for iron production, according to the W...

Monday, May 24

Yuryk’s predecessor, Volodymyr Zhmak, was fired in March for giving Rinat Akhmetov’s Metinvest Shipping a 38% discount on a 3-year lease on 9,000 freight cars , reports the Kyiv Post. Zhmak and Metinvest did not give their version. President Zelenskiy said Thursday that railroad freight rates will rise to international levels. The price for iron ore, a majo...

Mott MacDonald, the London-based engineering consulting firm, will inspect all seven of the hydroelectric dams of the Dnipro cascade to check the safety of the Soviet-era locks and dams and the viability of Ukryhdroenergo’s multi-year, $120 million rehabilitation plan, reports the press service of the state hydroelectric company. M...

Willem Coppoolse, has resigned after one year as head of the Naftogaz Trading division and CEO of Naftogaz Trading Gas Supply Company, the state oil and gas company reports. Naftogaz group chief operating officer Otto Waterlander will be acting head of the Trading division. Iryna Zhurav...

Friday, May 21

With world iron ore prices double the level of one year ago, President Zelenskiy defended a draft law passed last week to increase taxes on iron ore. “The price is very high today,” he said at his press conference. “You can slightly increase budget revenues. I think it’s fair.” Moving from a tax of 11-12% of iron ore as it come out of the gro...

Responding to strong world steel prices, Ukraine’s steel makers increased steel production by 7.2% to 7 million tons in January-April, compared to the same period last year. Ukrmetalurgprom, the industry association, said that pig iron production was up by 9.1%, also to 7 million tons. Last year, h...

DTEK officially launched Ukraine’s first industrial lithium-ion energy storage system yesterday, a pioneering entry into what is to be a billion dollar business in Ukraine during this decade. Maksym Tymchenko, DTEK’s CEO, said of the 1 MW battery in Zaporizhia: “This is first step toward building a new reliable, flexible energy system in Ukraine. We open door to other actors who will inves...

Worldwide during the 2020s, about $225 billion could be spent to build almost 500 gigawatts of storage capacity, said Eren Ergin , General Manager of Honeywell Process Solutions, the unit that helped build the storage system. Addressing the event by video link, he said: “You are the true trailblazers.” Bloomberg forecasts that ...

To get there, Ukraine has to develop regulations and laws to accommodate energy storage systems, Maksym Nemchynov, a deputy energy minister, said. Referring to this legal black hole, he praised DTEK for going ahead, calling it “a brave and risky project.” He and Roman Abramovskiy, minister of Eco...

Ukraine will meet the 18-month deadline to synchronize its power system with the EU one Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, Ukrenergo board chairman, told the battery storage event. The head of Ukraine’s state-owned electricity distribution company, promised: “Synchronization of the Ukrainian energy s...

Thursday, May 20

The Biden Administration is backing off imposing sanctions on Nord Stream 2 AG and its German CEO, Matthias Warnig, CNN and Axios have reported from Washington. Seeking to avoid serious damage to the Germany-US relationship, President Biden apparently has decided to sanction Russian ships and subcontractors, the re...

The Baltic Sea pipeline bypasses Ukraine and will concentrate enormous power in Germany as the main distributor of Russian natural gas to the EU . It will also deprive Ukraine of $1-2 billion in gas transit revenues and remove a brake on Russian behavior. Axios writes: “Bypassing Ukraine with a direct pipeline to Germany is an opportunity for ...

In a reversal, the 5-member Naftogaz Supervisory Board agreed yesterday to stay on for a one-year term – on the condition that the current Executive Board remains and the roadmap submitted by the Supervisory Board last Friday is respected. Clare Spottiswoode, the British energy executive who chairs the Supervisory Board, said yesterday in a video address to the Cabinet of Ministers: “We will carefully consider any good ideas and changes...

The Black Sea seismic program is to start this summer and the 4-member Executive Board is to remain in place through the end of this year , according to a copy of the ‘Joint Roadmap’ obtained by the UBN. At yesterday’s Cabinet meeting Prime Minister Shmygal wrote on Telegram that the government would start an independent search process ...

Adrian Karatnycky, wrote in an Atlantic Council Ukraine blog: “Amid all the rhetorical sturm und drang, it is important for everyone to understand that in appointing Yuri Vitrenko, Ukraine’s government has chosen a strong man...

Wednesday, May 19

Betting on strong Chinese demand for iron, Ferrexpo plans to spend $2 billion in capital investments to double its production of iron pellets by 2030 , reports Interfax-Ukraine. This year, the LSE-listed company is increasing production by 14%, to 12 million tons. A combination of strong Chinese demand and the Biden Administration’s planned infrast...

Ferrexpo has started using the first unmanned mining dump trucks in Europe. A US company, Autonomous Solutions Inc., installed remote controls on several large capacity Caterpillar trucks now in use at the Eristovsky open pit mine in Poltava region. A company video of one dri...

Marking Metinvest’s 15th anniversary, company engineers calculate that the company, Ukraine’s largest steel maker, has produced 142 million tons of steel since 2006 – enough steel to build 20,000 Eiffel Towers . “We are also affectionately called ‘Ukrainian steel giant’ because we are engaged in the extraction of raw materials, steel smelting and the sale of metal products all over the world,” wrote the pub...

Tuesday, May 18

DTEK Energy yesterday completed a 14-month restructuring of its loan portfolio, converting current Eurobonds and major bank debt, totaling more than $2 billion, into new Eurobonds; the company said last night after London markets closed. In an announcement posted on the London Stock Exchange, DTEK said parts of the current debt on DTEK Energy Eurobonds were converted into $425 m...

“Thus, DTEK Energy’s loans have been transferred to a public financial instrument,” the press release reads. DTEK CEO Maksym Timchenko said: “Despite the loss of assets in Donbas, the systemic crisis in the Ukrainian electricity market and the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19...

Monday, May 17

London-based Environmental Resources Management has been chosen by the Energy Ministry to draft a pilot project for finding a new future for a coal-based region. The pilot project is funded by Britain, a country which has struggled with this challenge since the 1980s. Germany and Poland also are advising Ukraine on the transition. With the number of coal miner...

Of Ukraine’s 33 state-owned coal mines, six money losing mines will be transferred to Centrenergo . Others will be privatized individually, said Yaroslav Demchenkov, the Deputy Energy Minister on Dom TV last week. “These are the ones that have promising coal beds, and enough coal that can be...

“A socially sustainable coal-phase-out in Ukraine” and “Decarbonisation of Ukraine’s steel sector” are among 10 policy proposals to be presented Wednesday at an online event sponsored in part by the German government. This Zoom conference, “Reaching Ukraine’s energy and climate targets,” will be in Ukrainian and English. Today ...

Tuesday, May 11

London-based VR Capital’s Elementum Energy has started commercial operation of its €59 million, 40MW wind energy Dnistrovska wind park , on the Dnister estuary in Odesa region. The 4MW GE turbines are the largest in operation in Ukraine today. Each of the 10 towers rises 131 meters high, about four stories short of Kyiv’s Parus Busin...

Richard Deitz, President of VR Capital Group Ltd, said: “Despite the ongoing challenges in the renewable energy industry in Ukraine, we believe that these growing pains will be successfully managed. Green energy is destined to play a growing role in the Uk...

Peter A. Gish, founding CEO of Ukraine Power Resources, said: “Ukraine has an extraordinary land resource which is compatible with large scale renewable energy. We look forward to building our next wind project.”

Several solar power producers intend to sue Ukrenergo, the state run transmission system operator, for ‘illegally’ restricting production of wind and solar power this spring, says Artem Semenyshyn chairman of the Solar Energy Association of Ukraine, reports reform.energy. The problem of ‘over production’ by solar plants is to sharpen in the summer, typically the peak solar...

Lithuania’s Modus Energy International has started arbitration against Ukraine, claiming €11.5 million in damages for last summer’s retroactive cutting of green tariffs. The company owns the Bolokhivsky solar parks in Zhytomyr.

EnergoReforma’ya göre, Norveç’li Scatec, Ukrenergo’nun Garantili Alıcı biriminin ödemelerindeki gecikmeler ve elektrik satın alma anlaşmalarındaki değişiklikler nedeniyle bir kredi sözleşmesinde temerrüde düştüğünü duyurdu . Scatec’in Ukrayna’da dört faal güneş enerjisi santrali ve 111,4 milyon dolarlık ödenmemiş kredisi var. Şirketin birinci çeyrek raporuna göre, Scatec’in Ukrayna’da sahip olduk...

Energy storage systems in Ukraine can receive $300 million in revenues a year , Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, chairman of Ukrenergo, predicted at a recent press conference, reports ExPro Consulting. Solar and wind power plant have production peaks and lows, necessitating storage system...