OREANDA-NEWS. March 06, 2013. In the framework of a working visit to Brussels Minister of Environment and Natural Resources of Ukraine Oleh Proskuryakov met with Director General of Directorate General for Energy Philip Lowe.

According to the head of the Environmental Ministry, “one of the top priority tasks determined by the Government and the President of Ukraine appears securing energy independence of our country”. In this context there viewed several principal ways of achieving this aim: resuming activity on old wells remaining from USSR times with applying new technologies; reducing of gas consumption owing to the use of energy saving technologies; extraction of non-traditional natural gas (sour gas, tight gas, shale gas, and coalbed methane).

As the Minister told, according to the estimates of experts the deposits of non-traditional gas in Ukraine reach dozens trillion cubic meters. However, Ukraine needs technical and financial assistance for holding highly-qualified activity. In this connection there was commenced forming of the legislation and practical implementation of projects for exploration and extraction of non-traditional gas with attraction of such leading companies as Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and ENI. In eastern Ukraine the activity of ENI company has been launched with 9 licensed areas to be singled out for development purposes.

Representatives of the Ukrainian delegation emphasized that in 2013 some more tenders are to be announced concerning elaboration of additional gas fields.