Ukraine is seeking to increase coal imports tons from the US as the country's winter coal stocks have dropped to their lowest in three years, officials said Tuesday.
DTEK, Ukraine's largest private power producer, said it will import 150,000 mt of US thermal coal after state-owned power plants had earlier focused on importing only anthracite coal.
"The stability and uninterrupted supply of coal to our thermal power plants in the face of shortages requires a serious solution," Vitaliy Butenko, the commercial director at DTEK Energo, said in a statement.
The first shipment of 75,000 mt of US thermal coal is expected to arrive later this week.
Ukraine began experiencing shortages of coal after its main coal producing regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, now controlled by pro-Russian separatist, had shut down trade with the rest of the country in February.
Coal stocks are "not comfortable," acting head of the state-owned power grid UkrEnergo Vsevolod Kovalchuk said.
He said the government had drafted an emergency plan to avoid rolling power cuts during the winter, including additional coal supplies from the US and South Africa.
Ukraine's coal inventories at thermal power plants as of Monday were 29.7% lower year on year at 1.112 million mt.
