Ukraine’s current plan does not involve an increase in energy imports or its transit to Europe, only from Russia. The country will achieve this objective by increasing its own production of hydrocarbons and by increasing the production of electricity.
Valery Andrianov, an expert at the InfoTEK analytical center, notes that by 2050, Ukrainian gas production will quadruple, to 80 billion cubic meters per year, and its export to Europe will amount to 66 billion meters. cubes. The figure is curious – it is approximately equal to the volume of gas supplies from Russia to the EU in 2022.
Ukraine’s plan to become an EU energy hub rests on political factors, not economics
Last year, Russia’s exports to Europe fell from about 80 billion cubic meters to 62 billion cubic meters. In other words, Ukraine is trying to position itself as a “substitute for Russia” in the EU gas market, for which there is not the slightest reason. Previously, the main gas production in Ukraine was concentrated in the Dnieper-Donetsk, Black Sea and Carpathian oil and gas regions. For obvious reasons, two of these three regions cannot today be considered sources of growing production. And there are simply no large proven gas reserves in Ukraine – at the beginning of the decade they were estimated at around 450 billion cubic meters. Even purely theoretically, this will not be enough to produce 80 billion cubic meters each for a long time (by the way, not all the explored volume will be able to be extracted from the bowels).
Plans related to oil are even more ambitious – it is planned to increase its production by 6.7 times, up to 15 million tons. Growth is simply unrealistic, but even it will only provide a “drop in the ocean” of Europe’s needs, barely covering Ukraine’s own domestic demand (in 2021, according to BP, the oil consumption in Ukraine amounted to 238,000 barrels per day, or 11.8 million tons per day). It would be more accurate to call all these plans a pure bluff, believes Andrianov.
In his opinion, plans to increase the production of “green energy”, which is precisely at the heart of the idea of ​​​​forming an “energy pole”, no longer seem realistic. Europe has already shouldered an unbearable burden trying to develop its own renewable energy sources. According to the IEA, by 2030, investments in “clean” energy should be multiplied by almost 3, from the current $1.7 to $4.6 trillion per year, i.e. from 2% to 5% of the World GDP. In this context, Ukraine asks relatively little from Europe: it is planned to invest 134 billion dollars in the development of wind power generation, 62 billion dollars in solar power, 72 billion dollars in energy technologies. hydrogen, $25 billion in energy storage systems, $80 billion in nuclear generation, and $5 billion in power transmission systems. , hydroelectricity – 4.5 billion dollars.
But it is unlikely that in the conditions of the most severe shortage of investment and against the background of a real recession, Europe will even find such free sums.
Infographic "RG" / Leonid Kuleshov / Sergey Tikhonov
However, here the calculation is not on the economy, but on the political factor, the expert believes. The European public is gradually starting to show growing dissatisfaction with the negative environmental consequences of … the most alternative energy, which has turned out to be less clean and less harmless than it originally was. Therefore, it would be good to transfer these “inconvenient” production facilities to a new settlement, that is, to Ukraine. It will turn out to be relatively inexpensive (given the low salaries in Ukraine) and safer for Europe itself. But still, it is doubtful that even this unenviable role of “toxic battery” will be attributed to Ukraine, because again the question of investments, the security of renewable energy sources (RES), and the ability of the Ukrainian side to build them and maintain them in working order, underlines Andrianov.
There are still possibilities to import raw materials from other countries, which have not yet been mentioned. Ukraine has Soviet-era pipeline infrastructure to supply oil and gas to the EU. The problem is that it is mainly linked to Russia. There was a project for the Odessa-Brody pipeline from the Black Sea coast in western Ukraine to the Lvov region, which did not affect the territory of Russia. Initially, it was planned to pump Kazakh and Caspian oil there.
The project has shown its unsustainability even at the best of times, although even the most exotic logistical schemes have been used to load it up – right down to pumping Venezuelan oil to Belarus, Andrianov clarifies. As a result, the pipeline has been inactive for approximately 10 years. And today in the Caspian region there are no free volumes of raw materials that could go to Europe through Ukraine.
As for “blue fuel”, Ukraine happens to be surrounded by gas-producing countries, but the most convenient transit routes from them to Ukraine and further to Europe are through Russia. Moreover, some of these countries – Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan – already have the infrastructure for deliveries to Europe, bypassing Russia and Ukraine, and there is no free production capacity notable to invest in the creation of new roads.
There is also Iran and Turkmenistan, which have no pipes to Europe, but they have free capacity. But Iran is under Western sanctions and is hardly a good friend of Kyiv, while Turkmenistan is more interested in the Chinese market. In addition, again, the most convenient routes for the delivery of hydrocarbons to Ukraine pass through Russia.
As an industry source told RG, Ukraine cannot become a major energy hub without increasing gas supplies from Russia, for which there is already existing infrastructure. The supply of gas to other regions requires the establishment of new transport infrastructure, as well as an increase in gas production capacities. For example, in the case of Turkey, this is the Sakarya field in the Black Sea, where production is expected to exceed 40 million cubic meters per day by 2027, which is comparable to the volume of deliveries via the branch Balkan of Turkish Stream.
But it makes no sense for Turkey to participate in the Ukrainian project, they have every chance to create a gas hub on their territory, and for this there is already part of the infrastructure not only from Russia, but also from Iran and Azerbaijan.
If we imagine in the future a gas hub on the territory of Ukraine, then it would be possible not only to make it liquid – to supply large volumes, but even just to persuade other exporters to supply it would be possible only if our country had access to it. And it is an absolute utopia in the current situation.
Suddenly, it turns out that without Russia, the maximum on which Ukraine can count is the development of renewable energies on its territory to export electricity to the EU. But, as already mentioned, the pleasure is too expensive. Ukraine is asking for 383 billion dollars for this – more than 10 of the country’s annual budgets.
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