KIEV: Coal reserves at Ukraine’s coal-burning power plants fell 0.2% from August 21 to 910,200 mt as of Monday, transmission system operator UkrEnergo, reported. Ukraine’s reserves of anthracite coal, which is widely used by the country’s power plants, rose 5.8% to 352,000 mt over the same period. Reserves of other types of thermal coal fell by 3.7% to 558,200 mt, UkrEnergo said. The current stock levels show Ukraine is lagging far behind schedule in building up coal stocks and needs to accelerate accumulation within the next one-and-a-half months to meet its targets.
Ukraine needs to store at least 2.5 million mt of coal in warehouses at power plants by October 15, including at least 1 million mt of anthracite, to survive the six-month high-demand season, according to the Energy and Coal Ministry.
Ukraine’s largest power and mining group, privately-held DTEK, is considering imports of anthracite coal from South Africa and Australia, but also imports of thermal coal from Poland, to secure steady operation of its power plants during the upcoming winter. “We are holding talks [on Polish coal imports] to ensure sufficient amount of coal at thermal power plants of DTEK Zakhidenergo which is bearing increased load,” DTEK CEO Maksym Tymchenko said in a statement.
Ukraine, a major coal producer, has been hard hit hard by an armed conflict with Moscow-backed pro-Russian separatists in areas of Donetsk and Lugansk regions in the eastern parts of the country since June 2014. Ukraine’s all anthracite producing coal mines are in these areas, and supplies have been repeatedly disrupted by the conflict.
DTEK said it will focus on steady supplies of anthracite to its power plants instead of switching its anthracite-burning units to consumption of thermal coal. “If we face problems with anthracite, we will put more load on our thermal-coal burning units, which have predictable supplies of fuel,” Tymchenko said. The coal inventories are now about 508,000 mt lower on the year, when Ukraine had 1.418 million mt of coal in stocks, including 635,000 mt of anthracite, as of August 31, 2015, according to UkrEnergo. Stocks of fuel oil at the power plants rose to 30,300 mt as Monday from 29,900 mt as of August 21.
UkrEnergo reports on fuel oil stocks with coal stocks because some Ukrainian power plants use fuel oil to initiate the burning of coal. Fuel oil also used by power plants as a reserve fuel for power generation. As of Monday, a total of 35 coal-burning units with total capacity of 6.43 GW were in operation in Ukraine, while nuclear power plants were running 10 reactors with a capacity of 7.68 GW, UkrEnergo said.
