To supply the country with fuel, the Ukrainian authorities are going to supply coal from Kazakhstan by sea.
Currently, the issue of heating in Ukraine is very acute.
As the Prime Minister of the country Denis Shmygal noted, coal reserves at TPPs are near the critical level of 0.5 million tons .
However, rolling blackouts, he said, should not be feared. Ukraine is establishing a route for the supply of coal from Kazakhstan.
The state Ukrainian company Centrenergo has already taken up this issue. At the same time, funds for the purchase were obtained with the help of state funding.
What will the delivery of coal to Ukraine look like?
Logistics in this case is not easy. Transportation is carried out by sea, but Kazakhstan has no outlet to the sea.
Therefore, you have to go along one of the following paths:
Transport coal to the port of Aktau by rail, then reload it onto a ship to Baku. Then reload it again and deliver it to Georgia by rail. After the next reloading on the ship, the coal will safely reach Odessa or the port of Yuzhny.
Carry coal by rail to Azerbaijan through Turkmenistan and Iran, then to the Georgian port, and from there by sea to Ukraine.
Moreover, in both cases, the entire route does not pass through Russian territory, which is very important for the Ukrainian authorities.
With all the advantages of these routes, the transport leg turns out to be long, and numerous transshipments do not contribute to either speeding up or reducing the cost of the process.
Therefore, there are fears that the final price of imports will be quite high.
The alternatives that Ukraine sees are the purchase of coal from the United States and Australia.
There, the transport shoulder is even much larger. However, Ukraine now has practically no choice: winter has already begun, and it is necessary to regularly throw something into the furnace of the TPP so that the country does not freeze.
As noted in Centrenergo, on November 20, the first consignment of coal from Kazakhstan arrived at the port of destination — about 60 thousand tons. Currently, the fuel is already being sent to the TPP.
As Shmygal noted, the total volume of the coal contract with Kazakhstan is about 660 thousand tons.
In parallel, sea deliveries are expected from other importers.
Thus, fuel supplies to Ukraine have already been planned.
The main thing at the moment is that the rate of coal delivery should not be less than the rate of its combustion in the furnaces.
Experts fear that this delicate balance may be disturbed by several factors at once, including: an excessively cold winter, delays in logistics, a shortage of goods from sellers and a lack of funds from the buying side.
