The Ukrainian gas transmission and underground gas storage facility operators plan to hold a joint road show for the provision of services to transport gas over short distances, the head of Gas Transmission System Operator of Ukraine (GTSOU) LLC, Serhiy Makogon, told a press conference in Kyiv.

"From this year, we have a short-distance transit service. This is the cheap cost of delivering gas from the border to the UGS facility and vice versa. It is already working, and we hope that this upload season, which will begin in April, will actively demonstrate interest in this area. For our part, we are planning a series of joint road shows with the UGS operator, where we will actively show and offer this service to our European partners," he said.

The head of the new GTS operator recalled that as of the end of 2019, at the peak of the injection period, about 2.4 billion cubic meters of natural gas owned by non-residents were in the UGS of Ukraine.

As reported, until the summer of 2017, customs clearance of natural gas transported to the territory of Ukraine for storage in underground gas storage facilities could be carried out only in the "transit" customs regime. Following the adoption by the Energy Customs of the State Fiscal Service of order No. 45 dated June 1, 2017, Ukrtransgaz received permission to open and operate a customs warehouse based on Ukrainian underground storage facilities. This allows companies, including foreign ones, to store gas for 1,095 days (three years) without paying any taxes and customs duties during further transportation of natural gas from Ukraine. After almost two years of preparation, Ukrtransgaz in April 2019 began to actively offer non-residents the service of storing gas in Ukrainian underground storage facilities in the "customs warehouse" mode.

In mid-April 2019, Ukraine introduced amendments to the GTS Code, providing, inter alia, for the creation of a new short-distance transportation service. The service allows traders to deliver gas for injection into Ukrainian underground storages.

In recent years, Ukrainian storage facilities of 31 billion cubic meters were loaded by only 50%. In this regard, the Ukrainian GTS operator began offering storage services to foreign traders, primarily from neighboring countries where there is a shortage of gas storage facilities, namely Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Moldova.