The American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine welcomes the Government's decision to approve the 2020 gas stock reserve at a rate of zero percent of the planned monthly supply of natural gas to consumers for the next month.
Experts of the Chamber member companies has been actively participating in discussions of this Draft Resolution with representatives of the Ministry of Energy. According to the experts, setting the natural gas stock reserve at 10 percent or more would have been an additional financial burden for companies. It could also have led to higher gas prices for final consumers as well as artificial disproportions in gas prices.
The final consumers of natural gas from private suppliers are still industrial enterprises. Accordingly, the issue of ensuring the supply of industrial enterprises, as a commercial relationship between such enterprises and their suppliers, should be resolved exclusively on a contractual basis and from the resources of private suppliers. When creating a gas stock reserve to ensure guaranteed supplies to specific consumer categories (in particular, the population), such reserve should be provided by the suppliers of such consumers. Obligations to create a gas stock reserve for private suppliers on a permanent basis could make the natural gas market less attractive for existing and potential market players.
The Chamber member companies support such decision of the Government and consider it to be in line with the practice of many European countries.
