Trump-Brokered U.S. Coal Arrives

Di Vincenzo Santo*

(Da Stratfor – 13 settembre 2017)

Washington. Pennsylvania-based Xcoal Energy and Resources delivered its first 62,000-metric ton shipment of anthracite coal to Ukraine on Sept. 13, Financial Times reported. The shipment is part of a larger agreement to provide a total of 700,000 metric tons of coal to the region, brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukranian President Petro Poroshenko earlier this year. The shipments are important to Ukraine as it seeks to diversify its energy supplies and become less reliant on Russian fuel imports. (…) The conflict in Ukraine’s east has dealt a particularly heavy blow to its economic relationship with Russia. Much of Ukraine’s industrial production was taken offline as its separatist rebellion escalated into a full-fledged war. The country lost a sizable share of its exports, while its gross domestic product saw a double-digit contraction. Kiev, along with the European Union and United States, slapped Russia with sanctions for its actions in Crimea and Donbas; Moscow responded in kind, leveling its own punitive measures against Ukraine and its Western backers. Around the same time, the Ukrainian government began to draw down its imports of Russian natural gas in response to a pricing dispute, and it started looking for new energy partners elsewhere. To that end, it began importing reverse-flow natural gas supplies from neighboring EU states such as Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. (Though these supplies still technically originated from Russia, they weren’t subject to the same contractual conditions as direct imports from Russia.) By the beginning of 2016, Ukraine had halted all of its natural gas imports from its looming eastern neighbor.

Il Presidente ucraino, Petro Poroshenko a colloquio con il Presidente Usa, Trump

 

*Generale CA (Riserva)

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