Ukraine increased gas production for 5 months of 2022 by 1.5% to 7.815 billion cubic meters.

In May, part of the private companies managed to bring production to the pre-war level. Thus, the amount of extracted blue fuel increased by 6% compared to April — up to 1,553 million cubic meters of gas. Currently, this is the highest indicator since the beginning of the war.

Compared with the previous year, we see that despite the war, mining companies managed to increase production by -1.5%. If in 5 months of 2021, the amount of extracted gas was 7,687 million cubic meters, then in the same period of this year, 127 million cubic meters more was extracted — a total of 7,814 million cubic meters of gas.

At the same time, the consumption of natural gas in Ukraine continues to fall rapidly. In May, only 714 million cubic meters were consumed, which is almost half as much as a year ago.

Despite the fact that in May the number of enterprises that stopped their work decreased to 14% (in April this indicator was 17%), the overall level of capacity utilization remains 40% lower than the pre-war level.

If the consumption trend continues, it is likely that this year Ukraine will be able to meet its needs at the expense of its own production. Instead, the Government does not count on this and has already instructed Naftogaz to pump at least 19 billion cubic meters of gas into PSG before the start of the heating season, of which 2.7 billion cubic meters should be imported.