Explainer-How Ukraine's gas infrastructure could be of interest to Trump

By Nina Chestney

LONDON (Reuters) - The U.S. administration suggested this week the United States could help run and possibly own Ukraine's power plants and energy infrastructure as part of a ceasefire deal with Russia.

Although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he and Trump discussed only the vast Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the country has also started importing U.S. gas to cover its domestic needs.

Kyiv also offers to store gas in its large underground storage to help supply Europe.

U.S. IMPORTS

Since taking office for his first term in 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump has been pushing Europe to replace Russian gas with U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies.

At first, the idea looked far-fetched as Russia was supplying Europe with around 40% of its gas needs under long-term contracts at relatively cheap prices, ensuring the competitiveness of economies such as Germany and Austria.

But Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 changed it all.

In the three years since the war started, Russia's gas export pipeline monopoly Gazprom lost almost all of its EU customers, who switched to buying LNG, largely from the United States, and increased pipeline gas imports via other routes.

Since taking office for the second time this year, Trump has pushed Europe to buy even more U.S. gas to help address what he sees as the EU's unfair trade surplus.

For decades, Ukraine relied on imports of Russian gas, and even in recent years some Russian gas volumes have reached Ukraine via reversed flows from Europe. All Russian gas flows via Ukraine stopped in 2025.

Ukraine this week agreed a second deal to buy U.S. LNG and Kyiv says it aims to expand purchases.

U.S. exports of gas into Ukraine have the potential to strengthen an economic partnership with Washington and its presence in Ukraine's storage facilities could deter Russian attacks and encourage more gas to be stored.

HUGE STORAGE

Ukraine cannot import U.S. LNG directly as it is lacking regasification facilities on the Black Sea.

Those could be built fairly quickly although the first project to build an LNG terminal in Odesa never took off.

Ukraine's current U.S. gas imports can come either via pipelines from regasification terminals in Poland or Germany, or from further south from regasification terminals in Greece.

"The U.S. has a significant amount of LNG capacity set to start up between now and the end of the decade. Export capacity is set to grow by 65%. A large part of this capacity is being built on the back of expectations that Europe will be there as a buyer," said analysts at ING.

Ukraine has the largest underground gas storage in Europe and the third largest in the world, capable of holding more than 30 billion cubic metres of gas.

In comparison, the whole of Europe has a maximum capacity of around 100 bcm to serve gas demand of around 450 bcm a year.

Ukraine's storage is well connected with Europe's gas network, offering traders space to store surplus gas in summer when demand is usually lower.

VAST PIPELINES

In 2020, Ukraine harmonised its regulatory framework with that of the EU and cut shipping fees and duties.

EU companies and traders stored gas in Ukraine in the 2022/23 and 2023/24 seasons but suspended those activities over the past year as Russian attacks on Ukraine's infrastructure intensified, damaging compressor stations at storage facilities.

Ukraine's ability to fill storage with gas - including U.S. LNG - is limited by the capacity of pipelines which connect to neighbouring Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania.

Analysts at Bruegel estimate this capacity at 1.5-1.8 bcm a month or up to 22 bcm a year.

The capacity for shipping gas from Ukraine to Europe is much bigger because its pipelines have been designed to ship Russian gas to the continent.

Pipelines crossing Ukraine cam pump more than 60 bcm a year or some 13% of Europe's gas needs.

They can supply buyers in Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and Romania and customers further away in Austria, Italy, Germany, France and Greece.

That means direct imports of U.S. LNG into Ukraine by sea - were they ever to happen - could result in large flows reaching Europe via a vast pipeline network, which was once used by Moscow to dominate EU's gas markets.

(Reporting by Nina Chestney in London; additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv and Marek Strzelecki in Warsaw; Editing by Dmitry Zhdannikov and Peter Graff)