Last week’s massive Russian attacks on energy infrastructure in the Poltava and Kharkiv regions in Ukraine have forced the shutdown of about 60% of the Ukrainian natural gas production, sources familiar with Ukraine’s talks with its allies told Bloomberg.
With more than half of its domestic gas production offline ahead of the winter, Ukraine will be forced to spend a lot more on natural gas imports to meet winter heating and power demand.
“Russia will do everything to prevent us from extracting our gas,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters in Kyiv earlier this week, as carried by Bloomberg.
“They will do everything. It will be difficult to protect all this. The task is to have money to import gas so that people have gas.”
Ukraine’s state energy firm Naftogaz said this weekend that Russia launched another massive attack on Ukraine’s gas infrastructure. The targets were civilian facilities that supply Ukrainians with gas during the heating season.
Last week, Naftogaz said that Russian forces launched on October 3 the largest strike on Naftogaz Group’s gas production facilities since the start of the full-scale invasion in early 2022.
“It was yet another display of Russian malice, aimed solely at disrupting the heating season and depriving Ukrainians of the ability to heat their homes this winter,” Naftogaz CEO Sergii Koretskyi said.
“As a result of this attack, a significant portion of our facilities has been damaged. Some of the destruction is critical,” Koretskyi added.
Ukrainian Energy Minister Svitlana Grynchuk said on Tuesday that Ukraine had discussed with G7 countries additional natural gas purchases as it seeks to boost imports by 30% to offset the damage from Russian strikes on its gas infrastructure.
Last week, Naftogaz signed a $349 million (300 million euros) loan agreement with the European Investment Bank (EIB) to use the financing to purchase gas to build long-term gas reserves and to ensure stable winter supplies for Ukrainians, following damage to infrastructure caused by Russia’s ongoing attacks.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
