Energetik Yushkov: Ukraine will pass the heating season more or less normally
Ukraine will go through the heating season more or less normally due to a drop in consumption, says Igor Yushkov, leading analyst of the National Energy Security Fund (NEF) and expert at the Financial University. The specialist spoke about this in a conversation with Lenta.ru.
“Ukraine now, in my opinion, has a little more than ten billion cubic meters of gas in underground storage facilities. On the one hand, this is not enough. Previously, they entered the heating season with about 17-18 billion cubic meters. But now it’s difficult to say how little this is for them, how much of a problem this is during the heating season, because we don’t know the exact volumes of gas consumption in Ukraine,” Yushkov said.
According to the analyst, part of Ukraine’s industry stopped in 2022, and many companies left. He also noted that some territories came under Russian control, and some Ukrainians left the country.
“Many thermal power plants have been destroyed or damaged since 2022. Therefore, their consumption fell, but gas reserves in underground gas storage facilities also fell. Both have decreased, probably, they are somewhere around the balance,” he added.
The worst thing for them would be if a frosty winter came, because there would not be enough electricity, and they would also consume gas at an accelerated rate. But due to the drop in consumption, they will pass the heating season more or less normally
At the same time, Yushkov said that there is still a threat to the Ukrainian heating season.
“If they really cut off the transit of Russian gas, it turns out that they will need to reconfigure the operation of their entire gas transportation system in the middle of winter. If there is no transit, then they will need to physically pump gas from the west of Ukraine through gas pipelines in reverse mode back to the east. The pipe has never worked from west to east like this in history. It was built and always worked from east to west. Therefore, there will be risks of heating and energy supply,” the analyst concluded.
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Earlier, the Russian Armed Forces (AF) attacked Ukrainian energy facilities. This was reported to the Russian Ministry of Defense. They clarified that as a result, it was possible to hit those facilities that supply the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) with fuels and lubricants. The defense department did not provide information about where they were.
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