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 December 3, 2016 narrowed by 1.324 million cubic meters (mcm) or 9%, to 13.408 billion cubic meters (bcm).

According to public joint-stock company Ukrtransgaz, on December 3, Ukraine pumped 55.64 mcm from the underground storage facilities and in the period from December 1 through December 3 – 153.45 mcm. In November daily gas pumping was 30.31 mcm.

As of December 3, 2016, daily imports of gas were 54.442 mcm (42.679 mcm from Slovakia, Hungary – 7.621 mcm, Poland – 4.142 mcm). Ukraine has halted imports of gas from Russia since November 26, 2015 (for almost 12 months).

Gas production in Ukraine on December 3 was 55.725 mcm (Ukrgazvydobuvannia – 40.324 mcm, Ukrnafta – 3.304 mcm and other companies – 12.097 mcm).

Transit via Ukrainian gas transport system in first days of December was large. On December 1 through December 3 it was 873.3 mcm (equals to the monthly figure of around 8.7 bcm).

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 mcm, and only from March 1 the need will fall to 27 mcm.

Naftogaz Ukrainy believes that natural gas stocks in Ukraine's underground storage facilities are enough to last 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 bcm of gas would be left in the underground storage facilities with the limit of no less than 5 bcm.

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