Fuel prices continuing to rise in Ukraine

MOSCOW. April 2 (Interfax) - The Ukrainian oil company Ukrnafta raised diesel fuel prices at its filling stations by UAH 2/liter and LNG prices by UAH 1/liter on Wednesday, and the move was followed by the Okko chain, Ukrainian media reported.

According to their monitoring, diesel fuel in these chains now costs UAH 83.99/liter and UAH 89.9/liter, respectively, while diesel+ costs UAH 87.99/liter and UAH 92.9/liter, respectively, which is currently the highest prices among all Ukrainian chains examined.

As the Parallel chain said in comments for the media, the decision by the state-owned Ukrnafta to raise its prices shows that the trend toward growing petroleum product prices around the world is an objective reality.

The chain explained that prices at its stations remained stable, except for the LNG price that increased by UAH 0.5/liter, because, in monitoring the market situation, it primarily followed the terms of its import contracts, supply costs, and some other factors.

"Therefore, prices for petroleum products in our chain remain stable at the moment, although there are prerequisites for prices to keep growing for all types of fuel," it said.

LNG is also responding to global factors and is rising in price due to a price hike on international markets, particularly because of the events in the Middle East, it said.

Nevertheless, Sergei Kuyun, director of the A-95 consulting group, said in comments for the media that Ukraine should not experience fuel shortages, particularly diesel, in April, despite some issues related to imports.

"All key players have successfully concluded contracts for April. Certain questions remain regarding supplies from Greece and Romania, where the local government has declared a state of emergency in the energy sector and banned diesel fuel exports. There is still no clarity regarding re-exports and transit of fuel through Romanian ports," Kuyun said.

At the same time, he admitted that prices for petroleum products would apparently continue to rise due to the growing oil prices.

"Unfortunately, the prices continue to rise. Over the weekend, oil prices rose to $115 per barrel from $108 per barrel before the weekend. Clearly, oil product prices will also continue to rise," he said.

However, he said, the situation is very volatile, and everything can change very quickly.

As reported, fuel prices in Ukraine remained relatively stable on Monday and Tuesday. Of all the chains monitored, Ukrnafta returned the so-called weekday price for A-95+ after lowering it by UAH 3/liter over the weekend.

The Socar chain also raised its diesel price by UAH 1/liter, thus aligning it with the prices the WOG and OKKO chains had set on Friday, March 27, when their diesel+ prices rose above the UAH 90/liter mark to reach UAH 90.99/liter.

On Monday, the LNG price at Socar grew by 2 UAH/liter, and UPG raised its LNG price by UAH 1.1/liter.

According to Kuyun's estimates, the average price of gasoline has increased by almost UAH 10/liter and diesel fuel price by UAH 23/liter over the month since the fuel prices started growing.