The delivery of the Russian gas, which arrives in Europe over Ukraine, should not be undamaged and changed, although the conditions on the gas supply from Russia have changed. Namely, the Russian company “Gazprom”, in in accordance with the current agreement, has transferred to the mode of gas payment in advance, so the Ukrainian company will got as much gas from Russia which would be previously paid. At the same time, the official representative of “Gazprom”, Sergey Kupriyanov said that the gas for European consumers would be supply to the full extent.
So, as things stand, we should not expect any disruption in supplying European gas market, and thus neither in the Serbian market because Ukraine has a duty to ensure gas transit to the third countries.
Will it be so, it is certainly going to be found out very quickly, and that situation is again an indication of how important is the pipeline “South Stream ” for Serbia, not only because it will become a transit country for natural gas, but also because as the other direction of Russian gas will be provided it will be significantly improved the supply security of the domestic market. This will contribute to reducing the domestic market dependence from gas import from the direction of Ukraine, from where this energy arrives in Serbia for now exclusively over Hungary.
Fortunately, at the moment when the consumption of this energy is much smaller than in the winter months, it has come to a tense situation and uncertainty about gas supplies from Russia, but consumers, whether they are heated independently or their apartments are connected to district heating systems that use natural gas, still have fresh memories of a few years ago, when Serbia, because of a dispute between Russia and Ukraine, literally remained without gas. The radiators were cold and after the quick reaction, the problem was solved by importing gas which has been paid as vendors sought, and soon was resolved a dispute between Russia and Ukraine and gas started to come regularly. Fortunately, although there still is no other supply direction in our country, a lot has changed since the underground gas storage in Banatski Dvor is operational, but it is certain that “South Stream” (will) completely changes the image of the domestic gas market, and there will no longer be any similar situations.
