Ukraine has placed an application for daily gas shipments from Slovakia to be increased to 30.3 million cubic meters, which was 32.3% up on August 1-4, head of the public relations department at Ukrtransgaz, Maksym Beliavsky told Interfax-Ukraine.

"As of today, an application for daily shipments of gas from Slovakia is set at 30.3 million cubic meters," he said.

From August 1 to August 5, a total of 115 million cubic meters of gas was transferred from Slovakia to Ukraine, he said.

The daily application on August 1-4 was set at 22.9 million cubic meters, and on August 5 the requested amount was 26.3 million cubic meters.

As reported, Ukraine's capacity to import gas from the EU via the Vojany-Uzhgorod pipeline is 40 million cubic meters per day, however, since May this has not been used at full capacity. In April, Ukraine received 37-38 million cubic meters of gas per day from Slovakia, in May the amount was 21-25 million cubic meters per day, in June it was 20-27 million cubic meters per day, and in July it was 13-25 million cubic meters per day.

Ukrtransgaz President Ihor Prokopiv said that Ukraine expects to increase its capacity to import natural gas from Slovakia in the reverse direction, from 41 million cubic meters a day to 55-57 million cubic meters.

The operators of the gas transportation systems in Ukraine and Slovakia recently agreed the relevant technical solutions, Prokopiv said, clarifying that the work would be carried out in Slovakia.

In January through July 2015, Ukraine reduced natural gas imports by 27.2%, or 4 billion cubic meters year-over-year, to 10.7 billion cubic meters. In particular, gas shipments from Europe totaled 6.9 billion cubic meters, or two-thirds of total imports, while 3.8 billion cubic meters, or around one-third, came from Russia.