Ukraine lacks gas for winter: only 6.5 billion cubic meters in storage

Ukraine lacks gas for winter: only 6.5 billion cubic meters in storage

As of August 31, gas reserves in Ukrainian storage facilities amounted to 6.5 billion cubic meters of free gas, which is significantly lower than last year’s level.

At the beginning of the previous heating season, the volume of reserves exceeded 13 billion cubic meters, of which over 8.2 billion were «free», meaning they could be extracted from storage.

At the same time, the autumn of 2024 turned out to be very dry, which allowed for significant gas savings, and the winter was warm.

For a stable passage through the heating season, Ukraine needs about 10 billion cubic meters of «free» gas.

Currently, Ukraine lacks approximately a third of this volume - 3.5 billion cubic meters. The cost of the missing gas amounts to about 1.4 billion euros at current prices.

At the same time, Ukraine reduced imports of natural gas from the EU in August by 20% compared to July.

The reduction amounted to 160 million cubic meters, despite falling prices on the European market.

Hungary and Slovakia (where Russian gas, delivered via the TurkStream pipeline, predominates) maintained leading positions in gas supplies to Ukraine, with their share in August amounting to 63.5%.

Overall, since the start of active gas imports from the EU in May, the share of supplies from these countries has been 67.35%.