In spring 2008, the Yuliya Tymoshenko government annulled the contract but it has been revived after a positive decision by the Stockholm Arbitration Court. Donetsk oligarch Rinat Akhmetov is searching for joint investors in the Vanco project.

Royal Dutch Shell won a tender in 2012 in a consortium with other international petroleum companies for the exploration of offshore deep-water reserves in the Black Sea’s Skifska field. They agreed to pay an upfront premium of $300 million upon signing the PSA and pledged to invest $200 million in the exploration phase.

The fourth policy, probably the most important, is supporting an expansion of gas production

Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell Ukraine Graham Tiley told the Ukrainian edition of Forbes magazine last year that it is entirely feasible for a three-fold increase in gas production from the current 20 billion cubic meters.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Ukraine was the biggest gas producer in the Soviet Union and much of this infra-structure of pipelines, underground storage and expertise remains. From the late 1970s the center of Soviet energy moved to Western Siberia and Central Asia.

One of the companies supporting Ukraine’s drive for energy independence is Cub Energy, a relatively small player in Ukraine’s energy sector registered in Toronto, a city it chose believing it offered better opportunities than London or Oslo.

Jan 13 Old New Year’s Day
The strangest holiday of the Slavonic calendar. In fact, it is also connected with the conservatism of Slavonic people. After the 1917 Revolution, Russia and Ukraine switched to the western calendar. Before that time they have been 13 days behind the rest of the world. However, even though the official calendar was switched, many people did not want to change and others refused to celebrate New Year before Christmas. The celebrations are not of such an enormous scale as the ones of the New Year’s Day and it is not a day off.