How to Unfreeze Ukraine's Gas Potential
Expert piece for TSN: why hundreds of promising fields are idle and what needs to change in the rules of the game for production to grow.
Dormant Licences
Ukraine holds significant natural gas reserves, but hundreds of promising fields have remained without real production for years: licence holders keep them as an asset for resale without investing in exploration and drilling.
Use It or Lose It
The proposal is to set clear deadlines for the start of work (three–five years), with the special permit automatically returned to the state and put up for auction. This is the "use it or lose it" principle that the Association of Gas Producers of Ukraine has advocated for years.
Deep Drilling and Technology
The second condition is access to technology. The era of "easy" gas is over: most of the remaining potential lies at depths beyond 5,000 metres, where Soviet-era approaches no longer work. Deep drilling requires a separate tax regime and foreign technology partners.
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