Belgrade to settle gas affairs with Hungarians and Russians
BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia will meet Hungary’s MOL and Russian gas giant Gazprom this week to discuss a debt to MOL and both companies’ interest in acquiring stakes in the country’s gas storage projects. Serbia owes MOL an estimated 18 million euros for transport of Russian gas via Hungary. The energy ministry said Serbia had a contract with MOL for gas transport only until the end of January and was looking to clinch a deal for the whole of 2006. MOL officials were due to meet Prime Minister Vojislav Kostinica today. «MOL will come to sign an annex to the contract, specifying that Serbia will take no gas through their pipeline during the summer season,» Srbija Gas spokesman Aleksandar Kostadinovic told Reuters. «This means no more summer season charges.» Local media have speculated that as part of the debt settlement, MOL would like a stake in Serbia’s first underground gas storage unit, which could hold up to 800 million cubic meters of gas a year. Kostadinovic said Srbija Gas would oppose any attempt to settle debts via the storage unit. But the energy ministry said it would not mind several investors taking up stakes in it. Srbija Gas already invested 13 million euros in the project launched in 1998. It needs a total of 106 million euros to complete the first stage by the end of 2006, Kostadinovic said. The total cost of the unit at Banatski Dvor is estimated at 195.5 million euros. But the gas reservoir business was promised to Gazprom in 2004, when Serbia and Russia agreed a complex plan to fully settle their mutual communist-era debts. Under the deal, Gazprom and Serbia’s oil monopoly NIS agreed to set up a 50-50 joint venture to develop the gas storage unit. The same company would develop a gas network in southern Serbia. Serbia relies on natural gas from Russia. Last week, Gazprom cut supplies to Serbia by 25 percent to some 7.6 million cubic meters a day due to a cold spell in Russia.
