Ukraine’s largest privately owned energy company began importing American LNG just as Kyiv decided to stop supplying Russian gas to Europe.
Ukraine hopes to sign a 10-to 20-year LNG deal next month with U.S. firms, Venture Global or Cheniere Energy, Reuters has revealed after the CEO of Ukrainian private gas company DTEK, Maxim Timchenko. The plan is to import the gas into storage facilities in Ukraine, from where it will supply Ukraine as well as be routed to Slovakia, Poland and Hungary.
“It’s an active discussion of our trading arm – another round of discussions and meetings will be taking place at (the) CERAWeek (conference) in Houston, so they will be speaking not only to Venture Global but to other big LNG suppliers. Cheniere, for example,” the CEO said.
The issue of gas supplies to the region after Zelensky decided to cut off transit routes from Russia has been in the news for a while. Despite ongoing sanctions against Russia, some countries, such as Hungary, are not only forced to take Russian gas due to being landlocked and the lack of alternative pipelines, but also due to its infrastructure being designed to refine Russian gas.
Hungary has, nevertheless, been working steadily on alternatives.
Last October, MOL, Hungary’s international oil and gas company, said it could refine up to 30-40 percent of non-Russian crude oil in its refineries in Slovakia and Hungary, with this figure expected to reach 100 percent by the end of 2026. The company’s president said if pressed, the current capacity could be pushed to 50 percent.
The country has also been in talks to buy gas from other countries such as Romania, with Foreign Minister Szijjártó reaching an agreement in late 2023 with Turkish state-owned oil and gas trading company BOTAS.
The U.S. has made no secret of its intent to profit off of LNG sales in the wake of the Nord Stream explosions and Russian sanctions, and there is no sign this will wane under Trump. According to Cipher News, American LNG accounted for 45 percent of EU LNG imports last year, a threefold increase over 2021.
There is some irony regarding Zelensky looking to specifically punish Slovakia and Hungary by shutting off its Russian gas pipelines and now looking to sell U.S. supplies. Since Russian gas imports via Ukraine were halted at the start of this year, heavily impacting both Hungary and Slovakia, Zelensky has had to rely heavily on imports from both countries to compensate for losses after a series of Russian missile and drone attacks targeted Ukraine’s gas storage facilities.
