The volume of gas in underground storage facilities (UGS) in Ukraine as of October 12 amounted to 16.715 billion cubic meters, an increase of 0.13% per day, according to data on the Ukrtransgaz website.
The storage fill rate per day increased to 54.01% from 53.94% the previous day.
The commercial director of Naftogaz, Yuriy Vitrenko, told RIA Novosti at the end of September that the volume of gas in the Ukrainian underground storage facilities is more than sufficient for the coming heating season.
In addition, he noted that Naftogaz expects a reduction in gas consumption in Ukraine in the coming winter season by about 5% compared to the previous same period. According to Ukrtransgaz, Ukraine took 6.7 billion cubic meters of gas from UGS facilities for the 2016-17 heating season, which is 21% less than in the previous period.
Ukrtransgaz previously reported that Ukraine in January-August 2017 increased gas imports on the reverse from the EU by 95.8% compared to the same period last year — up to 9.4 billion cubic meters. This year, the flow of gas in the Slovak direction amounted to 7.1 billion cubic meters, in the Hungarian direction — 1.5 billion cubic meters and in the Polish direction — 0.8 billion cubic meters.
Ukraine stopped buying gas from Russia in November 2015 and in 2016 for the first time did not use Russian gas in preparation for the heating season, pumping gas purchased through reverse gas in Europe into storage facilities.