Ukraine passed through the winter season of 2024-2025 with record-low gas reserves in storage facilities, and at the same time, gas production by private companies is decreasing in the country. As RBC-Ukraine notes, in 2024, production by private companies decreased to 3.4 billion cubic meters of gas, while in 2021 this figure was 5 billion cubic meters of gas.
"First of all, this is due to the suspension of special permits for gas production for companies whose shareholders the state has questions about and sanctions were applied," the RBC-Ukraine analysis says.
Until August 2024, the Ukrnaftoburinnia company did not produce gas due to the blockade. In November 2024, the State Geology and Subsoil Service suspended the special permits for two companies of the Smart Energy group - Regal Petroleum Corporation Limited (Poltava Region) and Prom-Energo Product (Kharkiv Region). These enterprises were forced to stop gas production, but resumed it after a court decision. But at the beginning of 2025 they stopped again. Their downtime may cause a loss of 85.5 million cubic meters of gas by the end of the year.
"Before the shutdown, the wells of the Poltava enterprise alone produced an average of 210,000 cubic meters of gas per day... If the enterprise's work is not unblocked in the near future, not only millions of cubic meters of gas will be lost, but the state will also have to spend additional funds on importing this resource at European prices," acting director general of Smart Energy Oleksii Zayets said in a comment to RBC-Ukraine.
In addition to direct gas losses, the Ukrainian economy is losing taxes due to the shutdown of enterprises. According to the Smart Energy group, in 2024 they paid more than UAH 850 million in taxes to budgets of all levels, but could have paid twice as much if their gas-producing enterprises had not been shut down.
"Increasing production is very important, because Ukraine remains dependent on gas imports. Obviously, this year the volume of imports will be quite significant. At the same time, increasing domestic production would make it possible to reduce dependence on external markets, geopolitical upheavals and increase the level of energy security of the Ukrainian consumer," RBC-Ukraine summarizes.
We will remind, employees of gas-producing companies in the Kharkiv and Poltava Regions appealed to the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with a request to unblock the work of their enterprises. Previously, the head of the Smart Energy group of companies, Oleksii Zayets, noted that the situation with the blocking of production enterprises in Ukraine is completely incomprehensible, given the lack of gas in gas storage facilities.
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