Cheban: Gazprom may reserve Turkish Stream for Moldova daily

Gazprom can still reserve daily volumes for January via the Trans-Balkan pipeline (Turkish Stream), including December 31, but, obviously, they will cost more. This was announced on Radiomoldova by the interim chairman of the Management Board Moldovagaz JSC Vadim Cheban.

He recalled that the Republic of Moldova was already in a similar situation in 2019, when the Ukrainian Naftogaz and Gazprom were negotiating the extension of gas transit through Ukraine. This agreement expires at the end of this year, and Kiev does not want to prolong it. As a result, the Trans-Balkan Gas Route remains the only alternative route for delivering Russian gas to the region.

"Gas volumes along the Trans-Balkan corridor have been practically preserved in the last days of the year. But then we were not even physically ready to receive gas. Now we are not talking about a technical or commercial problem, but about the will of Gazprom," Cheban stressed.

For his part, Liviu Duminica, director of the Romanian company Vestmoldtransgaz, which manages Moldova's gas transportation network, confirmed that in the case of daily gas purchases through the Trans-Balkan Corridor, transport tariffs will increase.

"These tariffs should be paid by the carrier, in this case Gazprom, or Tiraspol residents. But Tiraspol residents, as far as I know, do not pay at all," he added.

Since 2022, right-bank Moldova receives European gas through pipelines from Ukraine and Romania, and electricity comes mainly from located in Pridnestrovie Moldavian GRES (Inter RAO enterprise). For this purpose, Chisinau sends Tiraspol the entire volume received from Gazprom — 5.7 million m3/day. This makes it possible to provide about 90% of Moldova's electricity needs at a price one-third less than neighboring Romania can offer.

In the absence of gas supply, MoldGRES will switch to coal. This will be enough to meet the humanitarian needs of Transnistria, but excludes the export of electricity. In this regard, the authorities of the Republic of Moldova are considering the possibility of using the Trans-Balkan pipeline to provide Pridnestrovie with gas. Count on it and in Tiraspol, where, following Chisinau, a state of emergency was introduced due to problems in the energy sector.

As EADaily reported, Ukraine, due to the lack of agreements on extending the transit of Russian gas to Europe, did not hold long-term booking auctions of the gas transportation system (GTS) on the border with Russia at the end of this year. The last such auction with the possibility of guaranteed capacity for the whole of January, according to the schedule of the European Network of Gas Transmission System Operators (ENTSOG), was to be announced on December 9 and organized on December 16. At the same time, a long-term reservation had to be completed and The Trans-Balkan gas pipeline.