NJSC Naftogaz Ukrainy has given up the idea of splitting the assets of PJSC Ukrnafta, Yuriy Vitrenko, the executive director of the Naftogaz group, said.

"Now the idea of splitting Ukrnafta between its shareholders is no longer relevant," he told the Ekonomichna Pravda ezine.

According to him, the Ukrainian government did not confirm its readiness to contribute to the implementation of this proposal.

"It became obvious that splitting [Ukrnafta] will not solve all the problems. There is also the problem of PJSC Ukrtatnafta [Kremenchuk oil refinery]. This is the only refinery in the country, that is, there a problem of vertical integration. Plus there is the problem of old debts for gas that Ukrnafta produced and supplied to the Ukrtransgaz system, but hasn't got a penny for this," Vitrenko explained.

As reported, Naftogaz proposed splitting Ukrnafta's assets to repay the company's debts to the national budget. This was supposed to be performed in three stages: the classification of Ukrnafta's assets into clusters – the gas cluster (gas production), the oil cluster (production of crude oil and refining, of fuel sale) and the infrastructure cluster (pipelines); independent valuation of each cluster; purchase of separate clusters by Ukrnafta shareholders with repayment of debts of Ukrnafta to the budget at the expense of the funds to be received.

Ukrnafta is the largest oil company in the country. NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy owns a 50% stake + 1 share of Ukrnafta, and a group of companies associated with former shareholders of PrivatBank owns about 42% of the shares.