KIEV, December 31. /TASS/. Ukraine will see no rolling blackouts, Minister of Energy and Coalmining Volodymyr Demchishin pledged.
“There will be no rolling blackouts in the future,” the minister told a news briefing on Wednesday, noting that “Ukrainians will see in the New Year with electricity, heating supplies and with hopes for the future.”
Demchishin added that coal stocks in Ukraine are unprecedentedly low making only one million 400 thousand tons and only 300 thousand tons were used in December, but import will help solving the problem. “Ukraine has always extracted around five million tons of coal monthly. At the present moment this is around two million tons. To provide the power grid with electric power supplies power-generating stations should have burnt 3-3.5 million tons monthly. We cannot provide ourselves with coal independently. We can import it,” the minister noted.