(Reuters) – Ukraine is ready to store and re-export European gas for the 2023/2024 winter, the country’s gas transmission operator said, citing risk-assessment conducted with international partners.
The GTSOU, which runs Ukraine’s gas system, said that stress tests had been conducted to assess the risk of Russian military aggression hampering traders’ ability to safely store gas in Ukraine and transport it to the European Union (EU).
The operator said that Ukraine’s gas infrastructure proved its “high reliability and resilience” in the crisis situations modelled.
Multiple combinations of transport routes connecting storage plants and Ukraine-EU border points have been confirmed, which will allow easy and quick switching between routes, it said in the notice published late on Thursday.
EU gas storage is more than 90% full and the utilisation of stored gas is crucial for steady energy supply and the prevention of price spikes, the GTSOU said. Those storage levels were equivalent to more than 93 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas, the European Commission said last month.
Ukraine holds about 14 bcm of gas in storage ahead of the 2023/24 heating season, the chief executive of state-owned Ukrainian gas company Naftogaz said this week.
(Reporting by Anushree Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by David Goodman)
