EU companies start storing gas in Ukraine

Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko has said European companies have started storing gas in Ukraine, with 600 million cubic metres already pumped into the country's storage.

"As you can see from the trend of recent months, European companies are starting to store gas in Ukraine... Today we can say that already about 600 million cubic meters of gas is stored in Ukraine, this is the gas of European companies," he said in an interview with Bloomberg, answering a question about the volume of Ukrainian gas storage facilities used by European countries, Prime reports.

Halushchenko added that Ukraine expects new gas receipts for storage from Europe.

The minister earlier said that Ukraine had pumped more than 12.3 billion cubic metres of gas into underground storage facilities for the upcoming heating season.

Earlier, the Bloomberg agency reported, citing sources, that the European Union was considering increasing the volume of natural gas supplies to Ukraine for storage amid the fact that European storage facilities were approaching full capacity.

Ukrainian Deputy Energy Minister Mykola Kolesnik said that the country hopes to become a gas hub for Europe and its authorities offer European traders to use Ukrainian underground gas storage facilities at the lowest prices.