Natural gas stocks in Ukraine's underground storage facilities since the beginning of the 2016/17 heating season started on October 13 and as of October 29, 2016 narrowed by 212.33 million cubic meters.

According to public joint-stock company Ukrtransgaz, as of October 29, gas stocks totaled 14.52 billion cubic meters. On October 29, Ukraine pumped 17.64 million cubic meters from the underground storage facilities.

Thus, Ukraine will enter November with stocks of slightly less than 14.5 billion cubic meters.

As reported, Ukrtransgaz Head Ihor Prokopiv said that the company presented a road map to Naftogaz Ukrainy. Ukraine's needs in daily imports until March 1, 2017 are to be 40-42 million cubic meters, and only from March 1 the need will fall to 27 million cubic meters.

Naftogaz Ukrainy believes that natural gas stocks in Ukraine's underground storage facilities are enough to pass the heating season. The company has technical opportunities to additionally import more gas if winter were cold. According to the holding's calculations, at the end of the heating season 7-8 billion cubic meters of gas would be left in the underground storage facilities with the limit of no less than 5 billion cubic meters.

Ukrtransgaz operates the system of trunk gas pipelines and 12 underground gas storage facilities in the country with a total capacity of 31 billion cubic meters.