Natural gas consumption in Belarus in 2016 to plummet

Belarus’ natural gas consumption will drop by 1.1 billion m3 in 2016 or by about $220 million in comparison with 2005, the press service of the Belarusian Economy Ministry told BelTA.

The first program to modernize the Belarusian energy industry was put together in 2005. The economic effect from implementing two government programs on modernizing and developing the Belarusian power grid in 2006-2015 is estimated to exceed $600 million. In 2016 Belarus’ natural gas consumption will drop by 1.1 billion m3 in comparison with 2005. The reduction is equivalent to preventing the increase in electricity generation cost by about $0.01 per kilowatt-hour in 2016, said the press service of the Belarusian Economy Ministry.

BelTA reported earlier that in 2015 Belarus intends to get a total of about 20 billion m3 of natural gas from Russia or roughly as much as Belarus received in 2014.

The source pointed out that in accordance with government programs 2,354MW of power-generating installations were commissioned in Belarus in 2014, including 1,680MW of game-changing power-generating installations. The construction of highly effective power installations, the reconstruction and modernization of existing energy sources are supposed to reduce the amount of money spent on fuel. In the period under consideration about 3.1 million tonnes of tonnes of reference fuel was saved or the equivalent of 2.7 billion m3 of natural gas.