KIEV, Feb. 22 - Lukoil-Odessa oil refinery plans to invest some $25 million in upgrade work in 2010, director general Alexey Kovalenko said in an interview with the Energy Business publication.

KIEV, Feb. 23 – Sugar prices in Ukraine will be stable by May, and there are no grounds for their increase, according to market experts.

"There are no grounds for price hikes. We expect that they will be stable by May," the head of the Ukrtsukor national association of sugar producers, Mykola Yarchuk, said at a roundtable for the situation in the sugar sector organized by the Argumenty i Fakty v Ukraine newspaper in Kiev on Monday.

KIEV, Feb. 23 – The Agrarian Fund in the 2010/2011 marketing year (MY, July-June) is to buy 1.2 million tons of grain for the state intervention fund.

The government has instructed the fund to buy 1.084 million tons of wheat and wheat and rye mixture, 106,000 tons of rye, 8,800 tons of barley and 5,6000 tons of corn.

DONETSK, Feb. 23 – Inactivity of the government regarding the reimbursement of VAT could result in the blocking of the Ukrainian cabinet and Parliament, Mariupol Illich Steel Mill chairman Volodymyr Boiko said.

MOSCOW, Feb. 23 - Gazprom is not giving up its plans of building the North Stream and South Stream gas pipelines despite the suggestion of the Ukrainian president elect of returning to the issue of forming a consortium to manage and develop Ukraine's gas transporting network, Gazprom Deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev has told Russia Today TV channel.

KIEV, Feb. 24 - The share of bad credits in the total amount of loans extended by Ukrainian banks in January fell 0.1%, to 9.3% by February 1, 2010, the National Bank of Ukraine reported.

KIEV, Feb. 24 – The Defense Ministry needs UAH 19.8 billion in financing for 2010, Ivan Svida, the Chief of General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, told journalists at a briefing.

"We hope we will receive the minimum that we have named – UAH 19.8 billion," Svida said.

KIEV, Feb. 23 – Ukrinterenergo, the state electricity exporter and importer, in reported UAH42 million of net profit for 2008, a more-than-tenfold increase from 2007’s UAH3.983 million, the company's deputy director, Iryna Tykhonchuk, announced.

KIEV, Feb. 22 - The U.S. company Westinghouse will be able to supply its first commercial shipment of nuclear fuel to Ukrainian nuclear power plants no earlier than 2011, Natalia Shumkova, the head of the nuclear energy and industry department of the Fuel and Energy Ministry, said.

KIEV, Feb. 22 - UkrTatNafta Company, which runs the Kremenchuk oil refinery in Ukraine’s Poltava region, this year has purchased for refining about 80,000 tons of Iraqi oil of the Kirkuk brand, UPECO Consulting Company Executive Director Serhiy Kuyun announced at a press conference in Kiev.