Just a little about our work, which is to get an EU system of oil stocks implemented in Ukraine to eventually give it a 90 day buffer against Russian machinations, as well as global oil shocks.
Of course, this is rather hard to do, there being no money to buy the stocks, especially now at such high prices. Mostly arguments about who should manage the stocks are what takes up our time. Of course all current stocks are state secrets, (though probably there are none, having been stolen many years ago) or commercial secrets of the refineries (mostly owned by Russia, so not interested in Ukraine's security). All information on the refineries say they are running on hardly any stocks at all, which is hardly the way to run a commercial refinery. Of course they would say that, wouldn't they, if they smell money for some more stocks without paying for them.
In practice we are doing the groundwork for a new law to set up the framework for building up the stocks, reporting to the EU and a crisis management system for using the stocks.
And the push is for both the EU and Ukraine to have some progress when they meet in October to discuss the memorandum of understanding on energy that they signed in more hopeful days last December.
