JV Poltava Petroleum Company (JV PPC), an enterprise with foreign investments, a prominent non-state-owned oil and gas company of Ukraine that has been active here for 30 years, following protracted disregard for its requests by the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine, demands from the Cabinet of Minister of Ukraine to urgently amend its Resolution # 76 “Some Issues Pertaining to the Implementation of Provisions of the Law of Ukraine “On Mobilization Training and Mobilization” in Terms of Exemption of Persons Liable for Conscription from Active Duty in the Mobilization Period and Wartime”. Based on effective special permits and using its own production facilities, JV PPC continuously extracts hydrocarbons from extensive depth at licensed areas in the Poltava Region and sells hydrocarbon-based processed crude materials and finished products at the commodity markets of Ukraine. However, so far, the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine has refused to grant the repeated requests of JV PPC and add it to the list of fuel and energy sector companies in terms of the current procedure for exempting persons liable for conscription from active service.
“Three times we requested permission from the Ministry of Energy to be included in the fuel and energy sector company list but in response we received only boilerplate statements without any explanations or arguments. It is unclear what more confirmation they need when our company has paid UAH 25 million per male employee to the budgets of every level. It is not those UAH 35,000 that should be paid at the minimum level, but 700 times more”, Vitalii Dorohan, PPC CEO, said.
According to the CEO, in two years since the full-scale invasion, JV PPC has paid nearly UAH 4 billion in taxes to the state budget and allocated over UAH 200 million to meet the needs of the Defense Forces. Moreover, JV PPC has survived two targeted enemy loitering munition attacks, which resulted in significant damage to JV PPC’s assets that have not yet been rebuilt. JV PPC independently restores its production facilities, does not seek financial help, reviews its business model and searches for new clients to be able to continue to operate effectively where possible. At the same time, chaotic mobilization of employees of JV PPC, who are valuable industry experts, is taking place. They are mobilized at a turbo speed so that three hours after visiting the Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Center, employees are already halfway to the training centers for mobilized staff.
“It should be understood that in the oil and gas industry, highly specialized workers are employed such as fitters, mechanics, monitoring and metering instrument operators, well pumpers, borehole surveyors, and engineering and technical management staff who operate imported equipment and restored it after enemy attacks. Their expertise, training and education are priceless. Nobody can replace them, all the more so now when some of the people are in the army. As both the company’s status and whether its employees will be exempted are unclear, doing business becomes very difficult”, Vitalii Dorohan emphasizes.
JV PPC stresses that it understands that the current situation in Ukraine is challenging and that the frontline needs to be strengthened to preserve the state and its economy and save Ukrainian lives. However, it will be difficult to survive even the next winter under martial law without Ukraine’s own efficient fuel and energy sector, which is, in fact, a large and extremely important element of its real economy.
“We call on the government officials to urgently reconsider their approaches to granting JV PPC the right to exempt 100% of its personnel from active duty. Not only does the survival of JV PPC as a company depend on this but also the government’s potential to receive taxes and Ukrainian energy resources,” Vitalii Dorohan says.
It is Ukraine that will suffer from the inevitable shutdown of JV PPC due to the lack of professional staff, while the aggressor will thereby obtain an additional operational or tactical advantage in the economic war, which is waged on an equal footing with military operations.