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The issue of energy independence is one of the most important issues over the whole period of Ukraine's independence. In efforts to resolve it, the experts have broken numerous "spears", thinking about where the imports should originate from to ensure safety and save money. However, we are usually forgetting about our own resources.
The executive director of the Associaion of Gas Producers of Ukraine, Roman Opimakh, is reminding that Ukraine is among top-3 countries in Europe in terms of natural gas reserves.
«Even if we don't invest a dime in geological exploration, the reserves will be sufficient for over 30 years. Worldwide, natural gas is extracted at much higher rates. For us the rate is 2% per annum of total reserves. Worldwide average is 6%, mostly due to better technologies. Thus, we already have a huge gap today, which should be eliminated by investing in the industry, updating the park of drilling rigs. We have a good chance of not only becoming self-sufficient, but also of starting to export the natural gas», – Roman Opimakh is confident.
«Golos Ukrainy» has asked him, whether our country has chances to become independent of imported gas, and whether anything real is done in this area.