Yuriy Boyko: Boost of Ukraine’s Gas Extraction Among Priority Tasks

The Government of Ukraine successfully fulfilled the task given by President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, concerning the increase of extraction of gas and diversifying sources of gas supply to Ukraine.

This was announced by Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Yuriy Boyko in his speech for the conference titled “The global revolution in LNG: energy security of Ukraine” on May 17, 2013 in Kyiv.

According to Yuriy Boyko, Ukraine is increasing the extraction of gas from the Black Sea shelf. Moreover, projects on extraction of shale gas in Kharkiv region started being implemented.

“We have boosted extraction in the Black Sea region and also attracted several companies dealing with extraction of shale gas. In particular, it is the Shell company which has already started drilling in Kharkiv region and has huge prospects there,” the Vice Prime Minister said.

Besides, he noted that in the direction of diversification of sources of gas supplies Ukraine has started receiving first volumes of gas from Europe from last year. The project of construction of an LNG terminal is being implemented actively as well.

“The Government of Ukraine has approved a decision on construction of a terminal to receive liquefied natural gas and I am convinced that we will fulfill this task successfully within nearest time. As modern technologies are in progress with such high speed that in the following year already we will receive the terminal without significant infrastructure changes which would have been necessary 3-5 years ago,” Yuriy Boyko emphasized.

According to him, the technical stage of implementation of an LNG-terminal project will be completed in the following months and the commercial stage will commence, which, in particular, envisages negotiations with partners concerning gas supply issues.

“The global revolution in LNG: energy security of Ukraine” conference was organized by the State Agency for Investments and National Projects of Ukraine. Among the attendees were the head of the State Agency for Investments and National Projects Vladyslav Kaskiv, ex-governor of New Mexico state, former US Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson, representatives of national authorities, leading national and foreign companies in gas area, scientists, experts, representatives of public organizations. Topics discussed were Global revolution in LNG, LNG-terminal project near Odessa (FSRU), Impact of construction of LNG-terminal to the cost of gas and energy security of Ukraine, Geopolitical after-effects in Russia-EU connection.

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LNG World News Staff, May 20, 2013; Image: Gazprom