Nasalyk went against Kononenko

Nasalyk went against Kononenko

A new player has appeared in the coal arena of the country - SE "Ukrainian Fuel and Energy Company".

The author of the idea is the head of the Ministry of Energy, Ihor Nasalyk. With the help of the newly created structure, he plans to maintain the established distribution of financial flows in the industry, but this plan goes against the idea of the team of the presidential curator of Ukrainian energy, Ihor Kononenko. Thus, the impending split may soon result in an open confrontation with the most unexpected outcomes.

The creation of the new coal company became known on February 23, when the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry published an order by its head, Ihor Nasalyk, No. 145. "According to the Commercial Code and the laws of Ukraine, I order the creation of SE ’Ukrainian Fuel and Energy Company’ (UFEC)," the document states. The goals of the enterprise’s creation and the tasks assigned to it are not specified in it. But it did not go without hints. The order indicates that it was issued "considering the official memo of the department of the oil and gas complex." According to "OLIGARCH", it is headed by Oleksandr Lisnychenko, who was personally invited to this position last summer by Nasalyk. This means that the creation of UFEC is the idea of the minister’s team. What is the purpose of this task? According to sources from "OLIGARCH", the "Ukrainian Fuel and Energy Company" will have two main tasks. The first is the distribution of budget funds intended to support miners. The second is the sale of coal extracted by them.

Ihor Nasalyk

It will be particularly difficult for the Ministry of Energy to fulfill the first function since, for the past two years, the country has not spent a penny on so-called "capital construction" - funds allocated for state mines were spent solely on "supporting pants" in the form of paying off wage arrears for miners. But now Ihor Nasalyk has the opportunity to break the established order. The point is that since the blockade of commercial trade between Ukraine and the ATO zone, a deficit of anthracite has formed in the country’s domestic market. To reduce its urgency, a decision has already been made to reorient the stations of the only state-controlled thermal generation "Centrenergo" from anthracite coal to the so-called gas coal. It is believed that there is an excess of the latter in Ukraine even with the complete "curtailment" of the occupied territory of Donbas. But over the past two years, the production of gas coal has sharply decreased, and just to solve this problem, financial investments are needed from the state, which UFEC should become the distributor of.

It would seem that this plan should satisfy everyone: the Cabinet of Ministers - with the partial solution of the coal deficit problem, and the Ministry of Energy - with the opportunity to add several zeros to the amount allocated for its subordinate sector. But everything is not so idealistic. The fact is that the appearance of the "Ukrainian Fuel and Energy Company" annuls the chances of creating another association - the "National Coal Company" (NCC). The unofficial author of the idea of its creation is "energy market expert" Vitaliy Kropachov, who is currently considered the unofficial curator of state coal enterprises thanks to the easy hand of Petro Poroshenko’s army friend Ihor Kononenko.

According to Kropachov’s team’s plan, all state mines (about 30 units) were to be transferred to the management of the NCC. Subsequently, they were supposed to enter into close production contact with the coal preparation plants "Ukraine", "Komsomolskaya", and "Russia", which, according to sources of "OLIGARCH", were purchased by Kropachov last year from structures in the orbit of Oleksandr Yanukovych. Their satellites should also, according to rumors, become several enrichment plants, currently owned by structures of ex-regional Andriy Orlov (whose coal activities are of serious interest to the prosecutor’s office), and which Kropachov has an eye on.

Ihor Kononenko

Thus, Kononenko’s subordinate planned to create a private-public vertically integrated company that, on the one hand, would allow continued reliance on subsidized mine support from the budget, and on the other - legally transfer state funds (in the form of payment for enrichment services) into the private sector. The only and large minus of this idea was that it destroyed the business of a whole cohort of influential regional businessmen, among them being the same Andriy Orlov, as well as Yuliy Ioffe and Yefym Zvyahilskyi. With many of them, the head of the Ministry of Energy long established bilateral contact, so Nasalyk understood their potential problem and simply refused to sign the order for the creation of the "National Coal Company", preferring the "Ukrainian Fuel and Energy Company". For this courageous step, private market operators are definitely indebted to the minister. Whether he will have time to receive dividends from this decision is a big question, as self-will is clearly not the quality by which the BNP curators last year determined a candidate for the post of head of the Ministry of Energy.