In 2020, Ukraine produced 20.3 billion cubic meters of natural gas, which is comparable to the level of six years ago. Thus, it became obvious that lately, neither state nor private companies have been able to increase the level of production of “blue fuel”, writes the Ukrainian magazine “Korrespondent”.
In addition, it became clear that it will also not be possible to attract real foreign investment and foreign companies in the process of extracting the mentioned energy raw materials in the coming years. There are decent gas reserves in the Ukrainian bowels. There is only a need to start extracting them to get gas independence. But for six years, the authorities have not been able to resolve this issue.
In 2015, Ukraine stopped officially buying gas from Russia, switching to a “virtual reverse”. Then the annual gas production in Ukraine amounted to 19.9 billion cubic meters, and consumption – 33.8 billion cubic meters of gas. In Kiev, a program was even developed to abandon imported gas by the end of 2020. Their own extraction looked very attractive.
One cubic meter of gas produced in Ukraine costs about €100 at already developed fields. At the same time, the gas purchased in Europe (the same Russian) costs €200-300. It is not difficult to guess that the gas produced inside Ukraine is sold at the price of imported gas, bringing a huge profit.
To reduce dependence on imported raw materials, the authorities have placed a bet on the company “Ukrgasvydobuvannya”, owned by “Naftogaz of Ukraine“. It produces 70% of all gas in the country. According to the adopted strategy, “Ukrgasvydobuvannya” was supposed to increase gas production to 20 billion cubic meters by 2020, while the total volume together with private companies was supposed to be 27 billion cubic meters of gas. At the same time, it was planned to reduce gas consumption within the country under the “energy efficiency” program, which also provides for a reduction in industrial production. The implementation of this plan was to lead to the rejection of the import of raw materials.
Huge amounts of money were allocated from the budget for all this,. In 2016-2018 alone, “Ukrgasvydobuvannya” received 40 billion hryvnia, about 60% of which was spent on drilling, and 30% – on modernisation. However, a result was not achieved. The company was unable to increase the production level by 7 billion cubic meters. This suggests that the money was actually wasted and the rejection of the “virtual reverse” was impossible.
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