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End of Russian gas transit to Europe via Ukraine, Slovakia worried
Tap cut off: deliveries of Russian gas to Europe via Ukraine definitively stopped on Wednesday morning, after the expiration of a contract signed between the two parties at the end of 2019, a stoppage which worries several countries in the east of the Europe, including Slovakia.”We have stopped the transit of Russian gas, it is a historic event. Russia is losing markets, it will suffer financial losses”, welcomed the Ukrainian Minister of Energy, German Galushchenko, cited by its services in a press release.No delivery was planned for Wednesday, according to data published the day before by the Ukrainian operator GTSOU, noting the expiration of a five-year contract established in 2019 between the Ukrainian company Naftogaz and the Russian giant Gazprom. At the time, Volodymyr Zelensky was delighted with an agreement synonymous with “energy security” and “prosperity for Ukrainians”. But times have radically changed. changed, and Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, a conflict which has since left hundreds of thousands dead and injured, civilians and military alike. Russia regularly attacks Ukrainian energy infrastructure, plunging millions of residents into cold and darkness in the middle of winter. Gazprom confirmed in a statement that “since 08:00 (05:00 GMT), Russian gas has not been supplied for transit through Ukraine”.”Due to the repeated and explicit refusal of the Ukrainian side to extend this agreement, Gazprom was deprived of the technical and legal possibility of supplying gas for transit through Ukraine to leave of January 1″, lamented the Russian state company. Its daily exports to Europe via Ukrainian territory amounted in recent weeks to some 40 million m3, for a total volume supplied in 2023 of 14.65 billion m3. cubic meters, according to official figures. In this tense context, the price of European gas reached the symbolic mark of 50 euros per megawatt hour on Tuesday, a first in more than a year. – “Impact drastic” -If Europe's dependence has been significantly reduced since the start of the war in Ukraine, the states located in the East continue to obtain strong supplies from Moscow. According to Ukrainian Minister German Galushchenko on Wednesday , “Ukraine has informed its international partners.” In recent weeks, Hungary and Slovakia have complained about seeing the tap cut off. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who remains close to Vladimir Putin and whose country is very dependent on supply in Russian gas, warned on Wednesday of the serious consequences that the end of the transit will have according to him. “Stopping the transit of gas via Ukraine will have a drastic impact on all of us in the EU, not just on the Russian Federation” , he warned in a video published on Facebook. This nationalist leader went to Moscow on December 22 to try to find an urgent solution, provoking the anger of Volodymyr Zelensky, who accused him of wanting to “help Putin”. “Diversification has a price and any alternative to Russian gas will be significantly more expensive,” the spokesperson for the Slovak gas company SPP, Ondrej Sebesta, warned AFP. Hungary receives most of its imports of Russian gas via TurkStream, which passes under the Black Sea, and the cessation of transit via Ukraine will only marginally affect it, although Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said he “does not want to abandon” this route. Among kyiv's closest allies, Poland, through its head of diplomacy Radoslaw Sikorski, for its part hailed “a new victory” over Moscow. – State of emergency in Moldova – With the end of this transit and more than two years after the sabotage of the Nord Stream tubes in the Baltic Sea, Europe will now only be supplied with Russian gas by TurkStream, and its Balkan Stream extension. It also imports large quantities of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) by LNG tankers. In addition, Gazprom must stop delivering gas to Moldova on Wednesday, in the context of a financial dispute with this former Soviet republic which comes to re-elect a pro-European president. A sign of growing concern, Chisinau declared a state of emergency after the failure of negotiations with the Russian company. Gazprom had already stopped a large part of its deliveries to this country after the start of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, supplying only the pro-Russian separatist region of Transdnistria. But its thermal power station still provides 70% of the electricity consumed by the entire country, one of the poorest in Europe. bur/lrb
