Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico has suggested that the country might reopen gas transit through Ukraine after a five-year deal between Moscow and Kyiv expired. Fico has been urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to resume the transit, highlighting rising energy costs for Slovakia and the wider region.
“The pipeline running through Slovakia has a capacity of 100 billion cubic meters,” Fico told reporters in Brussels on Thursday. “I want to ensure it is used in the future,” he added.
As cold weather drives up heating demand, Europe’s natural gas reserves are depleting at the fastest rate since 2018. Gas Infrastructure Europe data shows storage is now just over 70% full, compared to around 86% a year ago. This marks a 25% drop from last year’s peak, the largest in seven years. However, Slovakia has already secured alternative gas supplies. On December 1, Azerbaijan’s state oil company, SOCAR, began delivering natural gas to Slovakia’s largest state-owned energy operator, Slovenský plynárenský priemysel (SPP). This came just a month after SPP signed a short-term deal with Azerbaijan, preparing for the potential halt of Russian gas via Ukraine.
Russia has expressed openness to a new gas deal with Ukraine. In November, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak stated that Russia was willing to continue gas deliveries to Europe through Ukraine, provided Kyiv and European countries could reach an agreement. “The European countries receiving gas through this corridor are interested in continuing such cooperation,” Novak told reporters. “We are ready to supply gas, but it depends on negotiations between the users and the transit country.”
Ukraine is facing a loss of up to $1 billion annually in transit fees from Russia, which it plans to counter by increasing domestic gas transmission tariffs. Meanwhile, Gazprom stands to lose around $5 billion in gas sales. Ukraine’s gas transit accounted for about 5% of the EU’s total gas imports.
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