GAS TRANSMISSION SYSTEM OF UKRAINE:
CURRENT STATUS AND PRIORITIES FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

1. INTRODUCTION

Prevention of negative impact of human activities, especially in industrial sector, and implementation of preventive measures aimed to protect both the environment and population belong to the main tasks of the Government, relevant state authorities of Ukraine.

2. OBJECTIVES OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN UKRAINE

Provision of the sustainable development of Ukraine is based on geopolitical, geographical, demographical, socio-economical and environmental characteristics, which are specific for Ukraine. Therefore the basic objectives of sustainable development of national economy (industry) are:

3. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF GAS TRANSPORTATION THROUGH THE TERRITORY OF UKRAINE

Ukrtransgas, the affiliated company of Naftogaz of Ukraine, National JSC, was created in 1998. It operates the gas transmission system (GTS) of Ukraine. This system includes 36.5 thousand km of gas pipelines (including 22.2 thousand km of mains), 12 underground gas storages with total working volume over 32 bcm, 71 compressor stations with the aggregate capacity of 5.4 GW, and a branched network of gas metering, gas distribution and gas-filling compressor stations.

The annual input capacity of GTS makes 288 bcm, the output capacity - 178 - bcm, including 142 bcm to the countries of Western and Central Europe. Today, GTS of Ukraine is one of the most powerful gas transmission systems in the world. It performs two basic functions:

Ukrainian GTS is closely connected with systems of neighbour European countries: Russia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova, and through these systems it is integrated into the European Gas Network. The GTS of Ukraine serves as a bridge between the largest gas-producing regions – Russia and Central Asia – and European gas consumers. The major flow of the export deliveries of Russian gas to 19 European countries (about 85%) passes through the territory of Ukraine, and nowadays our gas transportation system is able to provide the transit of ever increasing scopes of gas.

Annually the company provides gas transportation to Ukrainian consumers in the scope of about 75 bcm and transits about 120 bcm of Russian gas to 19 countries of Europe. Besides, 15-20 bcm of gas are transported to southern regions of Russia and Moldova.

Recently, the scope of gas transit to countries of Central and West Europe has increased, correspondingly, from 105 bcm in 2001 to 121.5 bcm in 2005, thus reaching about one-fourth from the total of gas consumption in Europe. This is a record level of gas transit for all the years of existence of the GTS.

Ukrtransgas belongs to one of the major budget-forming branches of Ukraine’s economy. Its facilities are located in all administrative regions of the country. Tens of thousand of its engineers and other employees work at its facilities in order to provide reliable gas deliveries to Ukraine and countries of the European Union. It is hardly to overestimate the influence of the Company’s facilities on formation of conditions of industrial and public sectors of Ukraine, especially with respect to steady provision of the country with fuel and energy resources.

4. CURRENT STATUS OF IMPLEMENTATION OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PRINCIPLES AT THE COMPANY FACILITIES

Within the framework of activities, aimed at implementation of provisions of the World Programme of Environment and Development Action for the XXI Century, which were approved at the summits in Rio de Janeiro (1992) and in Johannesburg (2002), and successful cooperation with gas companies of Europe, as a member of Working Group 8.3 “Environmental Management and Reporting” of the International Gas Union, Ukrtransgas started in 1998 an eco-policy experiment, aimed at a sustainable development at the corporative level and, in some cases,  at regional levels. The key factor in this respect was the requirement to provide European approaches to standardization of environment affecting factors and determination of current levels of detrimental load on environment, including consumption of natural resources.

5. BASIC ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECTS OF GAS TRANSPORTATION

Ukrtransgas is one of the majors of oil and gas complex of our country in terms of specific weight of its environmental impact, in particular, its affect on the atmosphere. Therefore, attention to arrangements, aimed at such impact optimisation and reduction, is constantly one of the everyday aspects, both for the Company and for its subdivisions. Recently, along with prevention of environmental pollution with emissions, so-called, traditional fuel consumption processes, the works, aimed at determination of the scopes of environment contamination with the greenhouse gases and finding out the ways of preventing such contamination also became an important aspect of the above-mentioned activity. Naturally, it’s quite clear that a system of gas mains is the largest generator of such emissions.

In this respect, the most important is cooperation with foreign partners. During the last time inspections were performed at the gas transmission equipment and linear part of the gas pipelines with involvement of Sumitomo Corp. (Japan), AGRA (Canada) and INDACO (USA), in order to define of the scope of carbon dioxide and methane emission. We have gained certain experience of monitoring of both generation of wastes from large-scale facilities and emissions wasted by specific types of equipment, including those related to components of the operational processes. At the same time, it should be clearly stated that qualitative and quantitative estimations of the composition of polluting or greenhouse gases emissions must be followed by solving the tasks of their reduction. It’s quite obvious that the ways of their reduction will obligatory involve, first of all, solving of a number of problems, related to technological processes of gas transportation, such as:

It is extremely important today to decrease the fuel gas consumption at gas compressor units, thus reducing the detrimental load on the environment through reduction of such emissions as nitrogen compounds and carbon oxide and, as well as prevention of the emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, and thermal pollution of the atmosphere. The following company investment programmes provide the wide-scale renovation of the fuel consuming equipment:

Pursuing the basic provisions of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is ratified by Ukraine’s Parliament, and Kyoto Protocol to this Convention, Naftogaz of Ukraine and Ukrtransgas strive for optimization of GTS operation, in order to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide within the framework of international programme for climate protection. In this concern, improvement of GTS operation should be based quality, ecology, dispatching, reliable metering. Solving of all these problems is closely related to complex expert examinations and audits.

The current Ukrainian legislation regulating environment protection and conservation of resources, does not provide any sector management and control in the area of ecological expert assessment of industrial facilities and processes. At the same time, the said sector component of the governmental and public management and control of the environment protection becomes crucial with growing of the complicated modern industrial facilities and processes, as far as it is not purely regulative, but bears also an executive character. And in such a situation, the GTS of Ukraine, being one of the most technologically-intensive branches of the national economy, cannot remain aside from the accumulated problems. The last five years Ukrtransgas put the main efforts to environmental management, organisation and improvement of the ecological audit and expert assessments as well as development of the mechanisms of publicity and public relations.

6. FINAL PROVISIONS

The following regulating documents are basic in the Company’s practice of adherence to provisions related to assessment of the environmental impact and control of the quality:

These documents comprise the requirements of a number of laws and by-laws of Ukraine, international standards (IES, ISO), international conventions and protocols thereto, standards of Ukraine (DSTU), inter-state standards of CIS-countries (GOST), as well as sanitary and construction standards, which are related to specific character of operation of the Company’s facilities and their possible impact on environment.

Harmonisation of the national environmental legislation with international and European (ISO 14000 series) standards, in particular, those related to ecological management and audit, are the most important tasks on our way to sustainable and environmentally safe development in Ukraine.

Since 2003, Ukrtransgas is certified by the national system of certification both with respect to the quality management system (DSTU ISO 9001-2001) and with respect to the environment management system (DSTU ISO 14001-97). Each year the Company applies a set of measures, aimed at the further development, audit, and implementation of the management system improvements, which allow to reduce considerably the cost of implementation and the accompanying flow of documents and to apprise the results of achievements reducing the detrimental load on environment.

Methodology of the sector ecological expert assessment of the design and other materials, developed following initiative of the Company, is used for consideration and approval of pre-design and design materials, documents related to implementation of new equipment, techniques, working programmes, etc., at facilities of Ukrtransgas, either as component of a general sector expert assessment, or separately in some particular cases. Currently, such expert assessment of the Company is a spiral-type cycle of works: design-construction (reconstruction or renovation)-operation-design.

Taking into account the above, the Company plans in the near future to:

Thus, introduction of the mechanisms of sustainable development, which are oriented at the general human values and world-class achievements related to environmentally and technologically safe industrial facilities, became the Company’s highest priority.