Andriy Kobolyev

Andríy Kóbolyev (Андрíй Володѝмирович Кóболєв; born August 16, 1978) is a Ukrainian politician and businessman, and the former chief executive officer of Ukrainian largest company, the state-owned oil and gas company Naftogaz.

The son of a scientist and an English teacher, Andriy Kobolyev was born in Kyiv on August 16, 1978.

He studied abroad in the U.S. State of Iowa during his secondary school years.

Andriy Kobolyev started his career in PricewaterhouseCoopers (1999–2002), starting while he was still in university.

In 2000, he graduated from the Institute of International Relations of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv with a master's degree in international economic relations.

He joined Naftogaz in 2002 as a consultant on corporate strategy.

From 2006 to 2007, he was the Director of the Department for Corporate Finance and Price Policy, and from 2008 to 2010, he was an adviser to the CEO.

From 2010 to 2014, Kobolyev was an adviser at AYA Capital private investment and banking group.

In October 2014, Kobolyev was named a global "Top 40 under 40" (years of age) leader by Fortune in recognition of his anti-corruption reform successes.

In 2021, he co-founded Eney, a US-Ukrainian diversified decarbonization and clean energy company that builds and invests in projects that advance the Energy Transition in Ukraine and other Eastern European and Central Asian countries.

Kobolyev took over as CEO of Naftogaz in March 2014 after the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity.

By his own account, he spent his years at Naftogaz fighting corruption, boosting profits, and lessening his nation's dependence on Russia.

In 2014, Gazprom, the Russian state-owned energy group, supplied 90% of Ukraine's domestic needs, despite the fact that Ukraine has Europe's fourth-largest proven gas reserves, after Russia, Norway, and the Netherlands.

A few months later, in summer 2014, Gazprom cut off natural gas supplies to Ukraine, citing billions of dollars in unpaid bills as the justification.

Kobolyev was then faced with the challenges of negotiations with Gazprom, which was seeking to increase the price of gas to Ukraine by 80%.

The situation was further complicated by domestic companies refusing to pay their debts, and by Russia seeking to prevent Ukraine importing gas from elsewhere in Europe.

During his tenure he also oversaw the transformation of Naftogaz into a (partly) corporatized company, as well as the successful pursuit of lawsuits and arbitrations against Russia's Gazprom that earned Ukraine over US $4.63 billion in damage awards, and the unbundling of Naftogaz to bring it into compliance with the EU's anti-monopoly rules.

By 2021, when he was removed as head of Naftogaz, he had successfully overseen the transformation of the company from a Soviet era loss making relic into contributing as much as 20% of Ukraine's annual national budget.

Diversification and freedom from Russian gas

Recognizing the national security and energy security vulnerabilities Ukraine's dependence on Russia gas caused Ukraine, Kobolyev spent his first two years at Naftogaz reducing Naftogaz's -- and thus Ukraine's -- dependence on gas from Gazprom, a crucial development for Ukraine.

In retaliation, during the winter of 2014–15, the Kremlin tried to block Ukraine's European gas imports by cutting natural gas supply to the EU.

This move failed to have any tangible impact on Ukraine, although Gazprom lost almost US $5.5 billion in the process.

Kobolyev believed Ukraine has the potential to become self-sufficient in natural gas given its sizable reserves if a collaborative plan between the company, government, and private sector is devised.

Fighting with the corruption and oligarchs

For years, Naftogaz's top managers had been grappling with corrupt government officials, trying to overcome the hurdle they constitute to becoming a more modern, open market energy system in line with EU standards for the oil and gas trade.

Kobolyev sought to loosen the grip of business and political leaders on Naftogaz, also a key foreign policy for western governments because of the traditionally outsized presence of corruption in Ukraine's energy sector.

He started by removing several intermediaries that were earning “unjustified profits” by buying gas from Russia and selling it to Ukraine.

By this time, RosUkrEnergo had already been sidelined, but other mediators had cropped up.

As a result of these efforts, Ukraine has not bought a single cubic metre of natural gas from Russia since 2015.

All imported volumes come from the European market through Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary.

Then, in 2015, Naftogaz cut off gas to two Firtash-controlled (Dmytro Firtash is a Ukrainian billionaire and oligarch under indictment and fighting extradition by the U.S. for corruption) chemical factories until they agreed to pay debts of $120 million.

Firtash's company said the standoff lasted four months.

Kobolyev also pressed the Ukrainian government, overseen from April 2016 to August 2019 by Prime Minister Groysman, to scrap the regulations known as the Public Service Obligation that required Naftogaz as the country's gas monopoly to supply the non-paying intermediaries, known as oblagaz, with gas to it could be supplied to retail consumers, such as hospitals.

In practice, much of the gas was not provided to the retail consumers and was instead arbitraged and sold illegally at a profit by the oblagazy.

Kobolyev said his pleas to reform the system fell on deaf ears.

From 2020, Andriy Kobolyev has been a member of the supervisory board of Ukrainian telecommunications company Kyivstar.

Following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Kobolyev became a key driver of Ukraine's effort to have western countries impose energy sanctions and embargoes against Russia.

In January 2023, Kobolyev was indicted for allegedly "paying himself" more than the statutory maximum allowed a state-owned enterprise employee in the form of a bonus he was awarded by the independent Naftogaz Supervisory Board, pursuant to a Ukrainian government-approved contract, for winning US $4.63 billion from Russia's PJSC Gazprom in the Stockholm Arbitration cases.

Zelensky himself authorized payment of the performance bonus in 2020.

The charges against Kobolyev were viewed by (his) former colleagues and anti-corruption activists as part of a Ukrainian government effort to eliminate prominent reformers and punish potential political rivals.