US company says Ukraine receives first-ever LNG shipment from Poland

ERU Trading, a Ukrainian unit of the US-owned development company ERU Corporation, said on Wednesday that Ukraine received a shipment of natural gas which was sourced from the Polish LNG terminal in Świnoujście.

This was the first ever shipment of LNG to Ukraine, according to ERU.

ERU said that in early summer its Polish supply partner purchased a delivery to Poland’s first LNG facility and arranged the transportation of the gas by pipeline to the Polish-Ukrainian interconnector.

ERU Trading then bought this gas at the border and placed it in storage in Ukraine, it said.

Starting in April of this year, ERU has had Political Risk Insurance (PRI) from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), an agency of the US Government.

This twenty-year contract for PRI with OPIC affords the company security in the transportation, storage and sale of gas in Ukraine, the statement said.

The combination of the availability of spot cargo shipment of LNG and OPIC PRI coverage allowed ERU to win one of the ten lots in a tender on November 28 for supply to the Ukrainian State-owned pipeline company, Ukratransgaz.

The company added that it was the only private supplier, with all other lots going to Ukrainian state-owned NAK Naftogaz.

ERU will supply 135 million cubic meters of gas to Ukratransgaz over the next seven months.

“We are proud in our work with our Polish strategic partner to have made the historic, first shipment of LNG to Ukraine and to be delivering this gas to UTG during the winter months,” Dale Perry, President of the ERU Corporation said in a statement.

Worth mentioning, Poland has earlier this year received a spot LNG cargo from Cheniere’s Sabine Pass plant in the US. This was the country’s first-ever shipment of US LNG.

It was not immediately clear whether the gas ERU imported from Poland was sourced from this shipment.

LNG World News Staff