Following the government’s ban on Ukrzaliznytsia entering into direct contracts with foreign diesel suppliers, the company switched to purchasing through the Prozorro.market platform. Initially, Ukrnafta won the tender, but later it lost the competition for a contract worth UAH 529 million to the Azerbaijani company Trading House Socar Ukraine. This is stated in the article of the Nashi Hroshi publication, according to Komersant ukrainskyi
According to the contract, Sokar will supply diesel fuel at a price of UAH 52,900 per tonne, which is slightly higher than Ukrnafta offered in June (UAH 50,948 and 51,300 per tonne). This price increase is attributed to the rise in the Platts index, which takes into account global fuel prices, as well as the weakening of the hryvnia from UAH 40.65 to UAH 41.23 per dollar.
“Ukrzaliznytsia has also left in place the requirement to colour diesel fuel as a means of combating theft. According to company representatives, this experiment, which began in the summer, is already bearing fruit, as internal reports no longer record cases of fuel theft.
Azerbaijan’s Sokar, a subsidiary of the state-owned operator, is one of the main suppliers of diesel fuel to Ukraine from Hungary via a pipeline. This method of supply is much cheaper than rail or road transport.
At the same time, diesel in Hungary is produced at a plant of a large local corporation MOL, which receives oil from Russia via a pipeline that passes through Ukraine. Previously, the main oil supplier to Hungary was the Russian private company Lukoil, but in the summer of 2024, Ukraine tightened sanctions against it, which stopped the transit of oil from this company to Slovakia and Hungary. After that, its oil was quickly replaced by supplies from other Russian companies.
It is likely that Sokar’s entry into the public diesel procurement market is only the beginning, the newspaper writes. At the level of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the possibility of replacing Russia’s Gazprom with Azerbaijan’s Socar in the gas transit scheme from Russia through Ukraine to Hungary and Slovakia is being discussed.