Energy Highlights: Ukraine
Ukraine is one of Europe's largest energy consumers, and it consumes over twice as much energy per unit of GDP than Germany. Almost half of Ukraine's energy consumption comes from natural gas.
Ukraine has a solid reserve base with proven oil reserves of 400 million barrels and proven gas reserves of 1.1 trillion cubic meters (seven billion barrels of oil equivalents).
Domestic consumption of oil is approximately 120 million barrels whilst production amounts to 30 million barrels. The corresponding figures for gas are production of consumption of 60 billion cubic meters (380 million boe) and production of 19 billion cubic meters (121 million boe).
In other words, despite significant oil and gas production, Ukraine is a large net importer. Therefore, Ukraine has large incentives to further exploit its resource base.
Ukraine's geographic position, linking East and West, while also holding critical warm water ports on the Black Sea, has made the country a trade link of growing importance between the former Soviet Union and Europe for energy.