Ukraine cuts natural gas imports in Q1 2021 by 83%

According to the report, Ukraine imported 0.2 million cubic meters of gas from Poland, 65 million cubic meters from Slovakia, and 410.4 million cubic meters from Hungary. Virtual reverse flows made up 86% of gas volumes.

At the same time, net exports of natural gas from Ukraine to European countries in January-March 2021 amounted to 18.3 million cubic meters, which was almost four times more than in the first quarter of 2020 (4.8 million cubic meters).

Re-exports of natural gas in January-March this year amounted to 618.9 million cubic meters (almost 240 times more than in the same period of 2020). In particular, 141.3 million cubic meters of gas were re-exported to Poland, 107 million cubic meters to Slovakia, 340.6 million cubic meters to Hungary, and 30 million cubic meters to Moldova.

"Currently, Ukrainian underground gas storage facilities store record volumes of blue fuel, and Ukrainian suppliers use their own reserves of hydrocarbons from underground storage facilities and buy gas from the 'customs warehouse' regime from European traders. Therefore, during the reporting period, gas exports from Ukraine exceeded imports. In particular, Moldova re-exported more than half of its own gas volumes to Ukrainian underground storage facilities," said Yevhen Todorov, Commercial Director of GTSO.

In his opinion, the dynamics of the first quarter of this year shows that the Ukrainian gas infrastructure is already firmly integrated into European energy markets and is part of the energy security of European countries.

According to GTSOU, natural gas transit through Ukraine in the first quarter of 2021 amounted to 10.4 billion cubic meters.

op