Sergey Kondratiev, Deputy Head of the Economic Department of the Institute for Energy and Finance, gave a comment to Gazeta.ru on gas supplies to Moldova.
On the eve of negotiations with Gazprom on a new contract, Moldova agreed with the Polish company PGNiG on the supply of 1 million cubic meters of gas. According to experts, such a volume in the winter period will not be enough for the country even for a day. Apart from Russia, only Romania can cover Moldova's fuel needs, but with the same Russian gas.
According to Sergey Kondratiev, in winter Moldova, taking into account the Transnistrian Power Station, daily consumes about 15-16 million cubic meters of gas. In one month, the indicators can reach 450-500 million cubic meters of fuel.
All hope for Romania“The scheme of supplies from Warsaw will be very difficult for Chisinau. Most likely, Poland will first supply gas to Ukraine, and only then the fuel will go to Moldova. That is, it will not be a direct pumping. Poland, of course, can, if desired, find 450 million cubic meters of gas on the LNG spot market. However, the price of such fuel will be significantly higher than that of Gazprom, and will amount to about $ 1.1-1.2 thousand per thousand cubic meters," Kondratiev emphasized.
Experts interviewed by Gazeta.Ru agreed that the only real opportunity for Moldova to replace Gazprom's transit is the Romanian pipeline. Only Bucharest can offer Chisinau a comparable fuel supply contract. In the most favorable scenario for Moldova, the cost of a thousand cubic meters can be $ 500-550.
According to Kondratiev, Bucharest will agree to make a substantial discount to Chisinau only in case of certain agreements on further economic and political integration. The fact is that in recent years in Romania, the idea of an actual takeover of Moldova has spread quite widely among the local authorities.
“After the launch of the Turkish Stream, Chisinau began to consider the option of stopping gas supplies from Russia and suspending the reservation of capacities in the trans-Balkan direction. At that time, Chisinau also discussed the option of increasing gas supplies from Romania. Now Bucharest is working on positioning itself as the most reliable partner of the Moldovan authorities, politically flirting with Chisinau,” Kondratiev explained
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