DTEK plans to invest $120–130 million in gas production in 2023, CEO of the company Maksym Timchenko has said.

"This year we plan to invest $120-130 million in production. Some 70% of these funds are the development of new deposits," he said in an interview with Forbes Ukraine.

According to him, most of the company's oil and gas assets have already passed the peak of production, and the natural decline in existing wells is 15-18%.

"The only way to compensate for the decline is to develop new fields. This year we start drilling on recently purchased licenses… We plan to start drilling at the Mayorivka area in the fourth quarter of 2023," Timchenko said.

The head of DTEK is convinced that Ukraine has huge prospects for gas production at a depth of 6,000-7,000 meters. "Thanks to the latest technologies, production at such depths is now paying off," he specified.

Timchenko also said that in 2022, DTEK enterprises produced 2 billion cubic meters of gas. At the same time, at the end of the year, they had 600 million cubic meters in underground storage facilities due to falling consumption and export bans, which led to liquidity problems throughout the first half of this year.

"But now Naftogaz has nevertheless begun to buy gas. I was skeptical about Naftogaz's ability to buy gas, but it has really entered the market and is actively buying gas. Accordingly, we have liquidity that allows us to fulfill our investment program," he said.

At the same time, the head of DTEK believes that the authorities "need to constantly discuss the topic of resuming the export of Ukrainian gas expertly with the market, because this has a significant impact on the development of Ukrainian gas production."