Ukraine’s Naftogaz joins European natural gas storage platform

Ukrainian state-owned oil and natural gas incumbent Naftogaz will provide weekly updates to the storage transparency platform run by Gas Storage Europe (GSE), the platform said on Monday.

The European Commission had invited gas transmission and storage operator Ukrtransgaz, owned by Naftogaz, to join the aggregated gas storage inventory platform late last year, ICIS reported in November ( see ESGM 21 November 2013 ). The commission hoped to encourage the development of a traded gas hub in Ukraine and the use of its storage facilities by European companies.

The GSE platform publishes data daily on 31 storage operators in 15 countries in Europe, covering a capacity of 79 billion cubic metres (bcm), or 82% of EU technical storage capacity. It also shows daily injections and withdrawals. GSE said the additional Ukrainian information will cover 13 local storage facilities with a working capacity of 32bcm and will be reported on a weekly basis.

Naftogaz controls 12 storage facilities in Ukraine with capacity of 31bcm, but it is not yet clear whether the 13th site on the platform is that owned by former Ukrainian production company Chernomorneftegaz. The Crimean-based producer was nationalised in March by the pro-Russian administration of Crimea ( see ESGM 31 March 2014 ).

Industry experts had previously told ICIS the prospect of European companies making use of Ukrainian storage would only happen if gas would flow from Slovakia, giving European companies the opportunity to inject large amounts of gas into Ukrainian storage.

This will now be a reality, after an agreement to flow gas from Slovakia into Ukraine was signed on 28 April ( see ESGM 28 April 2014 ). Under the agreement, 22 million cubic metres/day of gas will be able to flow via the Slovak border to Ukraine through the Vojany pipeline from autumn 2014. Lucie Roux