Page 37 - CE Outlook Regions 2024

list in mid 2024.
While Czechia was able to eradicate its high gas imports dependency on Russia, the country's oil imports rose to a decade high in the first half of 2023. The share of Russian oil imported by the Druzhba [Friendship] pipeline to Czechia rose to 65% in 2023 as state oil transporting and storage company Mero faced criticism for contracting oil purchases from a Cypriot company with links to sanctioned Russian state giant Lukoil.
Czechia is exempted from the EU-wide embargo on Russian oil imports before a CZK1.6bn (€67.5mn) TAL-PLUS intensification project is completed, increasing the flow of oil from the Italian port city of Trieste. The project should free the country from dependence on Druzhba by 2025.
At the end of October, majority state-owned power utility CEZ collected bids from French EDF, South Korean KHNP and American Westinghouse for the construction of a new nuclear unit at the Dukovany Nuclear Power Plant. CEZ management stated the examination of the bids would last until the end of February 2024 and the winner could be selected in May. All three bidders also submitted tentative offers for a further three reactors.
If it goes ahead the Dukovany project would be the most expensive investment project in the country’s history, with estimated costs in 2020 at CZK160bn.
Critics warn the Dukovany extension would pose a major burden to the country's finances and would come at the expense of an already protracted and painful energy transformation to a more sustainable model.
Czechia is also one of the five EU countries dependent on Russian fuel supplies and continues its efforts to diversify from the Russian state company TVEL as imports of Russian nuclear fuel into the EU soared by 30% y/y in 2022. In October 2023, Dukovany NPP tested a new fuel for the first time and Westinghouse is expected to replace TVEL in 2024 at Dukovany. Westinghouse and French Framatome had earlier replaced TVEL as the fuel supplier to Temelin NPP with deliveries due to start in 2024.
3.1.5 Construction
Construction output decreased by 0.9% y/y in October, signalling continued struggles in this sector. The value of permitted construction increased by over a third due to eight construction projects with budgets of over CZK1bn. Without those, the value of permitted sites would have decreased by 5%. Building construction (-1.2%) as well as civil construction (-0.2%) declined ahead of the winter season.
Local analysts welcomed the CNB’s lowering of interest rates at the end of 2023 and expect that further lowering in 2024 could provide a boost
37 CE Outlook 2021 www.intellinews.com