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Naftogaz denies claims of prelim transit deal with Gazprom
UKRAINE
A compromise still alludes the pair.
UKRAINE’S Naftogaz walked back reports of a preliminary gas transit deal with Russia’s gas behemoth Gazprom on December 16, saying progress had been made in talks but the outlines of a deal are still elusive.
Naftogaz’s executive director Yuriy Vitrenko told Platts he was not aware of “any, even pre- liminary, agreement on a long-term transit deal.”
“We have a preliminary agreement on poten- tial instruments (contractual structure) that can be used for transit if there is a deal,” Vitrenko said.
Gazprom and Naftogaz held a round of bilat- eral talks in Vienna on Friday, where Vitrenko met with Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, after which Russian news agency RIA Novosti para- phrased Vitrenko as saying that some “prelimi- nary agreements” had been reached.
However, talks are ongoing and Vitrenko said that, “We now have to work extremely hard even to finalise the legal structure, because there are still open questions.”
The current gas transit and supply deal is due to expire at the end of the year and the two sides
are trying to find a compromise. Both have built up signficant reserves of gas in storage and Naf- togaz told bne IntelliNews in an interview that its base case scenario is that Ukraine will be cut off from Russian gas supplies on January 1 2020.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Paris at the Normandy Four summit on Decem- ber 9 and held bilateral talks on the sidelines where the gas issue was broached.
Zelenskiy claimed that the negotiations had been “unblocked” and said in statement over the weekend that a new temporary deal could be signed before the end of the year.
“I think there is a very high probability that the contract on gas transit will be signed [by the end of 2019],” Zelenskiy said as cited by Tass.
“A contract on gas transit is important not only for Ukraine, but for Europe as well,” he added.
Zelenskiy said he discussed this issue with Putin at the Normandy Four summit in Paris on December 9. “I see that everyone is interested in signing a document,” he noted.
Balkan countres agree on gas corridor
BULGARIA
The vertical corridor idea is not new.
THE gas network operators of Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary and Romania have signed a new mem- orandum on creating a gas corridor connecting the four countries, Bulgaria’s state-owned gas grid operator Bulgartransgaz said in a press release.
The vertical gas corridor idea is not new. The first step toward the project was taken in December 2014, after Gazprom abandoned the South Stream gas pipeline project that would have supplied Bulgaria with Russian gas via the Black Sea.
Under the MoU, which replaces an earlier preliminary deal reached in 2016, the four countries will look at developing cross-border projects for network connections, identified by the EU as projects of common interest, as well as all other projects that would lead to completion of the corridor, Bulgartransgaz said.
The corridor would help the countries to access each other’s gas supplies, lowering prices and safeguarding against shortages. One project in particular plays a key part: the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB), a 182-km gas link due online in 2020.
IGB is slated to pump 3 bcm per year of gas to Bulgaria from Greek LNG terminals and the Southern Gas Corridor, which deliveries gas all the way from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz field. Bulgaria is also preparing infrastruc- ture to handle gas from Russia’s TurkStream pipeline, but construction is running behind schedule.
These projects will help Bulgaria estab- lish its elf as a gas hub. As part of this effort, the country is looking to set up a new gas trading platform with help from European partners.
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