On Wednesday, the US embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine said that a liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker from the US has arrived at the Polish LNG terminal at Swinoujscie on November 19. The gas will be delivered via gas pipeline from Poland to Ukraine.
The buyer of the LNG is a private trading company Energy Resources of Ukraine. It plans to inject a total of 90 million cu m into the country’s gas storage in the near future.
The embassy wrote on its social media account Twitter, “US LNG is coming to Ukraine. Another step in helping Ukraine achieve energy independence, a ship carrying LNG destined for Ukraine arrived yesterday at Swinoujscie."
The purchasing of US LNG is significant as Ukraine used to only rely on Russian gas for decades but had to suspend its imports in November 2015 due to tense relationships and no progress on gas transit talks. Until recently, Ukraine depended on imports from Europe.
Ukraine is importing around 1.5 Bcm/year of gas from Poland and will expand the capacity to 5 Bcm/year next year.
In its underground gas storage facilities, Ukraine accumulated 21.78 Bcm of gas on November 1, the highest in a decade, due to the concerns over a possible supply disruption of Russian gas via Ukraine to Europe from 2020.
