Southeast Europe’s gas market is developing competing northbound supply routes from the Adriatic and Aegean seas, increasing the number of ways buyers can access liquefied natural gas and gradually changing the commercial importance of regional pipelines.
Croatia’s Krk LNG terminal received its first cargo from Norway’s Hammerfest LNG plant in August, adding another source to a terminal that already handles cargoes from a range of global suppliers.
The cargo arrived at Omišalj aboard the Minerva Limnos after loading at the Equinor-operated Hammerfest facility.
Krk was developed primarily as a diversification asset for Croatia and neighbouring countries, but its importance is increasingly determined by how much regasified LNG can move beyond the Croatian market toward Hungary and other Central European buyers.
Croatian and Hungarian transmission operators have been working to increase capacity on the northbound route, potentially allowing more Krk gas to compete with supplies entering Central and Southeast Europe from other directions.
The competing corridor is developing further south.
Bulgaria’s state gas supplier Bulgargaz said on Aug. 26 it would offer regional customers an integrated LNG service from the 2026/27 gas year covering procurement, terminal access, regasification, storage, transmission and delivery to an agreed cross-border point.
Customers could either buy LNG through Bulgargaz or supply their own cargo and use the Bulgarian company for the downstream logistics chain.
That model builds on Bulgaria’s access to Greek LNG infrastructure, including Alexandroupolis, as well as storage at Chiren and pipelines connecting Bulgaria with Greece, Romania, Serbia and Turkey.
The result is a developing commercial contest between gas entering Europe through the Adriatic and gas arriving through the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean system.
Serbia sits increasingly close to the middle of those routes.
It already has access to Bulgarian supplies through the Serbia-Bulgaria interconnector. A planned Serbia-North Macedonia connection would add another southern route toward the Greek system. The proposed pipeline is designed at about 70 km on the Serbian side and around 1.2 billion cubic metres a year of capacity, according to Serbia’s Energy Ministry.
For buyers, the importance of diversification is increasingly commercial rather than merely geopolitical.
The relevant calculation includes the LNG cargo price, regasification fee, pipeline tariff, storage cost, capacity availability and the price at the destination hub.
A cargo landing at Krk may be cheaper for one Central European buyer while an Alexandroupolis cargo may be more competitive for a customer in Bulgaria, Serbia or North Macedonia.
Those economics will change continuously with congestion and hub spreads.
The competition is becoming more important as Europe approaches winter with unusually low gas stocks. Gas Infrastructure Europe data showed EU storage at 65.44% full on Aug. 31, compared with around 78% a year earlier. Germany was only 53.32% full, although Italy, Croatia, Hungary and Romania were in stronger positions.
A tighter European gas market increases the value of having more than one entry route.
The strategic change in Southeast Europe is therefore not the replacement of one dominant pipeline by another.
It is the emergence of a network in which Krk, Alexandroupolis, TAP-linked supply, Bulgarian infrastructure, Turkish routes and regional storage compete and complement each other.
That gives traders more optionality and countries more security.
It also means pipeline capacity and transmission tariffs will increasingly determine which LNG terminal actually sets the marginal gas price in the Balkans.
