Ukraine and US energy giant Chevron signed a USD 10-billion shale gas deal today that the ex-Soviet nation hopes could end its energy dependence on Russia by 2020.
The production-sharing agreement allows Chevron to explore the Olesky deposit in western Ukraine that Kiev estimates can hold 2.98 trillion cubic meters of gas.
The deal, worth the equivalent of 7.4 billion euros (USD 9.9 bn), comes close on the heels of similar agreements which Ukraine has struck in the past year with the Anglo-Dutch group Shell and the US super-major ExxonMobil.
"The implementation of large-scale projects with Shell and Chevron ... Will enable Ukraine to fully meet its natural gas need by 2020," Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych said moments before today's signing ceremony.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov has estimated the deal's value at USD 10 billion (7.4 billion euros).
The Chevron agreement comes as part of a drive by Ukraine to diversify energy sources at a time when it is seeking to cement closer relations with the European Union at Russia's expense.
Last week, Russia slapped Ukraine with a gas bill of nearly USD 1 billion in apparent anger at Kiev's bid to strike an EU free trade and political association agreement in Vilnius at the end of the month.
The EU deal's signature is seen as a first step in Ukraine's eventual membership in the 28-nation bloc.
But Moscow wants to see Ukraine join a Russian-led customs union that already includes Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Russia's energy giant Gazprom has denied presenting the massive gas bill to Ukraine as part of a strategy to force Kiev to reconsider the EU pact.
Gazprom said today that so far Ukraine had paid less than a tenth of the money in instalments it began meting out only after Russia issued a warning about the debt payment last week.
Ukraine has been moving swiftly to explore shale gas deposits that it lacks the technology to develop but which it views as a plank of its energy strategy in the years to come.
The nation of 45 million people consumed about 50 billion cubic metres of natural gas last year.
It imported 33 billion cubic metres of that volume from Russia and set the itself the target of slimming that figure down by five billion cubic metres this year.
