Russia hits Ukrainian gas storage, situation non-critical – acting CEO

• Russia hits storage infrastructure
• Ground infrastructure needs repairs but withdrawals and injections work as per nominations
• Engineers assessing situation to report scale of damage in upcoming days

VIENNA (ICIS)–A Ukrainian gas storage facility was struck on Sunday morning as Russia unleashed a barrage of drones and missile on civilian infrastructure, including in the western region close to the Polish border.

Roman Maliutin, acting CEO of Ukrainian gas storage operator UTG, described the situation as “non-critical” and said engineers were working to repair the ground infrastructure which was hit during the strikes.

Service nominations, including storage and capacity bookings, were being fulfilled as planned according to a statement by mother company Naftogaz.

Maliutin said it was the first time since the start of the war in February 2022 that ground infrastructure related to energy storage was hit by Russian attacks.

He said some withdrawal capacity may have been lost but engineers were expected to review the situation on the ground and report back in upcoming days.

Technical withdrawal capacity stood at 79mcm/day prior to the attack.

Maliutin confirmed there are 1.5 bilion cubic meters of gas in customs warehouse of which 0.72 million cubic meters (mcm) belong to non-resident and 0.78 mcm to resident companies.

Customs warehouse regime allows companies to inject and keep imported gas without requiring customs clearance for three years.

The volumes are equal to the gas that UTG expected to remain in storage at the end of 31 March.

Russia launched waves of attacks throughout the previous week, destroying thermal power plants, hitting a dam over the River Dnipro and forcing electricity transmission system operator Ukrenergo to introduce rolling blackouts and ramp up technical electricity imports from neighbouring EU countries.

On Sunday morning, Russia launched 29 cruise missiles, 14 strategic aircraft and 28 Shahed drones across the whole country, most of which were repelled by the Ukrainian Defence Forces.

Of these, 20 missiles and seven Shaheds targeted critical infrastructure in the Lviv region, according to mayor of Lviv Andrii Sadovyi.

Most storage facilities are in the western part of Ukraine.