Petro Miroshnikov, who supervises the LNG project, said construction of the terminal will most likely begin in 2013 and will be completed in 2015.
"We believe that countries from the North Africa and the Middle East, and Azerbaijan will become the main suppliers," Miroshnikov said at a press conference Tuesday.
Ukrainian officials have previously refused to disclose names of countries they are holding the talks with, but people familiar with the situation said Algeria and Qatar had been on the list.
First Deputy Prime Minister Andriy Kliuyev said recently that contracts with future LNG suppliers will be signed soon, but declined to elaborate.
Ukraine has been seeking to build the LNG terminal near Odessa to be able to receive natural gas from elsewhere in order to reduce dependence on Russia, its only supplier of gas.
The LNG terminal will have annual capacity of 10 billion cubic meters. Ukraine, which produces domestically about 20 Bcm/year of gas, also imports between 30 Bcm and 40 Bcm/year from Russia to meet its gas demand.
Russia has three times cut off gas supplies to Ukraine over the past five years -- most recently in January 2009 -- also causing disruption of gas supplies to Europe.
Ukraine moves up to 80% of Russia's Europe-bound gas supplies, or about 110 Bcm/year, and has one of the largest gas transportation systems in the world.
