Whilst the Black Sea Shelf/Sea of Azov exploration plot rush continues apace with the majority of the worlds big oil players and Government of Ukraine, an oil summit takes place in Kyiv involving 300 or so interested individuals/parties. More than anything else, you would imagine that market development and transparency (at least to the usual opaque standards of transparency in oil) would be high on the agenda as Ukraine seeks to import more from nations other than Russia in an effort to reduce dependency on Russia and also gear itself to a streamlined and efficient upstream process relating to its own production with foreign partners.
Ukraine is already seeking to transport more product from Azerbaijan (and if you have never been to Azerbaijan, Baku is well worth a visit) to both Czech Republic and Poland. Coincidently (or not) I am in negotiation to sell some real estate of mine to a family from Azerbaijan, the main bread winner working for the oil industry of Azerbaijan and they are relocating to Odessa.
These things take time of course, particularly if the EU follows its plans to buy from Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan as well, reducing its dependence on Russia and goes direct to Caspian Sea producers in a bid to diversify supply chains a. With Ukraine also looking to do the same, the Ukrainian government seems to be offering reduced port fees to make this more cost effective.
One would hope that when Ukraine eventually moves from upstream to downstream in a meaningful way relating to its own production, those fees will remain low to add domestically produced oil and gas to the list of major exports from the nation with agriculture, chemicals, metals, coal, ores and fertilizers.
It will be an interesting commodity area to watch over the next ten years in Ukraine me thinks!
Odessablog's Blog 