This ends our live blogging for August 19. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.
Facing price-fixing charges, ex-energy regulator says will stay out of Ukraine:
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
A former head of Ukraine's energy regulator accused of taking part in an alleged conspiracy to fix electricity prices for the benefit of the country's largest privately owned power and coal producer says he will stay away from the country.
Dmytro Vovk, who headed the National Energy and Utilities Regulatory Commission for nearly three years until May 2018, said in an August 19 Facebook post that that "as long as the head of the presidential office controls" the country's anti-corruption law enforcement agencies, as well as the judiciary, "I'm not ready to come" back to Ukraine.
Vovk's whereabouts is unknown.
He said, "I would gladly come to court, but not ready to participate in a kangaroo court."
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau earlier this month accused Vovk and three regulators of colluding with several executives of electricity and coal producer DTEK to manipulate tariffs on electricity generated from coal that forced consumers to overpay by $747 million in 2016-17.
DTEK allegedly benefited by $560 million in the scheme.
Vovk dismissed the charges of abuse of office as "a wild goose chase" in a previous Facebook post.
There is "no legitimate basis for suspicions set out in the investigation," DTEK said in an August 8 statement.
A Kyiv court on August 14 set bail at $400,000 for one DTEK manager who wasn't named.
Ukraine's richest billionaire, Rinat Akhmetov, owns DTEK, which is part of his holding company System Capital Management.
The so-called Rotterdam+ pricing formula that NABU has been investigating since March 2017 was in place from April 2016 until July of this year.
It based the wholesale price of electricity by Ukrainian thermal power plants on coal prices set in the Rotterdam port plus delivery costs to Ukraine.
NABU alleges that at certain times it has not seen documented proof that the purchased coal originated in Rotterdam, maintaining that there was no justification for the price hikes.
For more than a year until December 2014, Vovk was the national manager in Russia for Ukrainian-based chocolatier Roshen, which is owned by ex-President Petro Poroshenko.
He was a vice president of the Kyiv-based Investment Capital Ukraine boutique bank in from 2009 to 2013.
Kyiv pursues additional reverse gas flows in preparation for potential Russian gas-transit cutoff:
By RFE/RL
Ukraine's state-run gas-transport company, Ukrtransgaz, is preparing to open another reverse-flow point for the import of an additional 1.5 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas by January 1 in anticipation of Russia halting gas transit through the country when their contract expires at the end of the year.
In an August 19 news release, pipeline operator Ukrtransgaz said the fuel will come from Romania via Ukraine's shared border with Moldova, where gas-metering stations will be upgraded on both sides to accommodate the expected volume of gas.
"For Ukraine and Moldova, this project is of strategic importance, because by diversifying the gas-supply routes, both states will increase their dependability and the uninterrupted supply of gas to their customers," Ukrtransgaz said.
The additional volume is the equivalent of 15 percent of last year's total imports.
However, the 50-kilometer stretch of the modernized gas line will cross Transdniester, Moldova's pro-Russian breakaway region. Ukrtransgaz didn't focus on the issue of Russia possibly interfering with this gas flow.
Since Ukraine's gas-transportation system is designed for output, pipelines need to be upgraded to open so-called reverse gas flows.
Ukraine already receives gas this way from Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary. Kyiv stopped importing gas from Russia in November 2015 after Moscow invaded Ukrainian territory and annexed its Crimean Peninsula the previous year.
Ukrtransgaz said it was currently in talks with its Romanian counterpart, SNTGN Tansgaz, as well as other countries to receive the gas from the Trans-Balkan pipeline.
In 2018, Ukraine imported 10.6 billion cubic meters of gas, or one-third of what the country consumed.
Fears that Russia's Gazprom will completely stop gas transit through Ukraine next year, when Moscow's Nord Stream 2 pipeline network goes online, are forcing Ukraine to store higher volumes of gas in underground storage facilities ahead of winter.
Ukrtransgaz operates 12 gas-storage facilities, all located in western Ukraine, that have a total capacity of 31 bcm.
The company has completed upgrading five gas compressor stations that will allow them to pump gas from reservoirs in western Ukraine to eastern and southern Ukraine.
The pipeline operator is owned by state-run Naftogaz Group, a vertically-integrated oil and gas company.