Russian missiles hit Ukrainian gas storage site, Ukraine boosts power imports

An underground gas storage site in Ukraine has been hit in the recent wave of Russian missile strikes on power facilities, Ukraine's state-run Naftogaz energy firm said on Sunday, but it said natural gas supplies to consumers have been unaffected. The energy ministry and distributors said Ukraine ramped up imports of electricity and halted exports on Sunday after the recent series of Russian attacks, in which top energy producer DTEK lost 50% of its capacity.

Russia attacked Ukrainian generating and transmission facilities on Friday, causing significant blackouts in many regions, and energy facilities in three Ukrainian regions were also attacked on Sunday morning. But Naftogaz said it was keeping up with customer demand.

"All nominations of customers for storage and capacity booking services continue to be fulfilled in full," its CEO Oleksiy Chernyshov said in a statement. The energy ministry said in a statement: "For the current day, electricity imports are forecast at 14,900 megawatt hour (Mwh). No exports are expected."

Ukraine imported 3,300 Mwh a day before the attack on March 22, with exports of 2,148 Mwh. "Losses (from Friday's attack) have already been assessed and the DTEK group has lost 50% of its generating capacity, we can say this information officially," the head of distribution firm Yasno, Serhiy Kovalenko, said on national television.

He gave no more details. DTEK is Ukraine's largest private power-generating company. Kovalenko said Russia had attacked two parts of the energy system - generation and distribution, hitting both thermal and hydropower plants.

"The enemy hit hard at grid nodes and transformers," he said. The ministry said that on Sunday Russia had attempted to hit a critical energy infrastructure facility in the Lviv region in western Ukraine.

"Equipment caught fire and the facility was de-energised. There were no casualties. The consequences are being assessed," the ministry said. It said that as a result power lines in the Kyiv region were damaged and 1,400 households in two settlements had lost power.

Naftogaz's Chernyshov said his company was currently working on localising and eliminating the impact of the Russian attacks. "There are no critical consequences for the operation of the (underground) storage facilities, as the gas is at a considerable depth. The damaged part of the ground infrastructure will need to be restored, but we have sufficient backup capacities," he said.

Most of Ukraine's gas storage capacity is in the western part of the country and it is able to store around 30 billion cubic metres of gas.