At
a meeting of the Government of Ukraine on Friday, October 24, Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk instructed the
Ministry of Regional
Development, Construction, Housing and Utilities of Ukraine along with regional state administrations to "take urgent measures to implement the orders of the Government and to speed up the heating season so as to provide the people with warm."
Arseniy
Yatsenyuk has been informed by the first deputy chairman of Naftogaz Ukrainy Serhiy Pereloma
who reported that, according to the Government’s
order, Ukraine has actually started the heating season.
Serhiy Pereloma has informed that on October 20 Naftogaz has started to withdraw gas from storage facilities
in order to ensure the sustainable heating season and to provide resources: "For today, we
use up
to 20-25 million cubic meters per day. As soon as all the subjects switch the heating season, provided that temperatures will be at or close to the current ones – we
will use up to 50 million cubic meters per day. "
NJSC
"Naftogaz Ukrainy" provided a supply of natural gas to all the regions of Ukraine in the necessary volumes: "Due to technological modes of heating systems and hydraulic coolant supply to each individual home requires a certain amount of time that may last from 3 to 8 days. The larger is the settlement, the more time it takes."
Serhii Pereloma stressed
that Naftogaz Ukrayiny was engaged in work with heat supplying organizations in
order to reduce the time required for delivery of heating to each apartment.
“Today, 50% of
citizens could feel the heating season commenced. TPP-5 and TPP-6 "Kyivenergo" have provided in full the natural gas to
produce heat energy for the needs of the population. Gradually, the maximum by Sunday-Monday,
100% of the residents of the city of Kyiv will get normal functioning of the
heating season and will have heating supplied by 14-15 April," he explained.
Related to other
cities of Ukraine, NJSC Naftogaz Ukrayiny is maintaining constant contact with
representatives of regional state administrations, regional gas companies, subdivisions of NJSC Naftogaz Ukrayiny, Ukrtransgaz,
"All the issues are being resolved in the real-time mode”.
The PM stressed the
need for immediate opening of special accounts to pay for energy carriers,
"It is enough, when the companies owned by Firtash
used to control all the flows. People would pay for heating, but the money
would disappear from regional gas companies".
So far there
have been opened 32% of accounts, according to the statistics, "Immediately open all the accounts up till the end of the month and prevent an opportunity for oligarchy to steal
money from the pockets of people. We must pay for gas," said Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Moreover, the Prime Minister
informed the Government would work with the European
partners to maximize the amount of reverse gas supplies,
"If our European partners solve an issue of large reverse flows with us, it means we will be able to actually replace the entire gas volume
with that shipped from the European Union".