Coal reserves at Ukraine's coal-burning power plants dropped by 13.2% over the past eight days, or by 196,000 mt, to 1.288 million mt as of June 29, compared with 1.484 million mt as of June 21, UkrEnergo, which runs the country's power grid, reported Wednesday.
Ukraine's reserves of anthracite coal, widely used by the country's power plants, fell 17.5% to 334,600 mt as of June 29, compared with 405,400 mt as of June 21.
The rapidly dropping level of anthracite stocks follows rising demand due to warmer weather and a coal supply shortage due to the stoppage of railroad traffic by pro-Russian militants in Donetsk and Luhansk, where all Ukrainian anthracite coal is produced.
Reserves of anthracite coal have plummeted 59.5% since the beginning of June to 334,600 mt as of June 29.
Ukraine's energy and coal ministry, which had several emergency meetings Friday to balance out power generation and consumption, called on consumers to limit power consumption during the peak hours in order to avoid blackouts.
"Today, as never before, we need understanding and support from our consumers in order to limit power consumption during the hot days of July and August," the ministry said in a statement. "This would ensure uninterruptable power supplies."
Ukraine's reserves of other types of thermal coal fell 11.5% to 954,000 mt as of June 29 from 1.078 million mt a week ago, UkrEnergo said.
Overall coal stocks are now lower by about 79,000 mt compared with the same week last year, when Ukraine had 1.367 million mt of coal as of June 30, 2015, according to UkrEnergo.
Sufficient coal stocks are essential for the successful operation of Ukraine's power system not only during hot weather in the summer, but also during the six-month high-demand season beginning in October.
Ukraine needs to store up to 2.5 million-3 million mt of coal in warehouses at power plants by October 15 to survive the high-demand season, with current stocks at reserves showing the country needs to double inventories over the next three-and-a-half months.
In addition to the coal supply problem, Ukraine's power sector is also under pressure from a number of outages in the nuclear sector over the past few months.
Six Ukrainian nuclear power units out of 15 are offline due to maintenance and repairs, according to state nuclear power generator Energoatom.
As of June 29, a total of 41 coal-burning units with total capacity of 7,960 MW were in operation in Ukraine, along with nuclear power plants running nine reactors with power generating capacity of 7,095 MW, UkrEnergo said.
Stocks of fuel oil at the power plants rose to 35,900 mt as of June 29 from 35,100 mt as of June 21.
UkrEnergo reports on fuel oil stocks with coal stocks as some Ukrainian power plants use fuel oil to initiate the burning of coal. Fuel oil is also used by power plants as a reserve fuel for power generation.
