The gas supply agreement with Gazprom was extended by state-owned companies Energoinvest and BH-Gas until June 30th this year, Avaz news portal reports.
This means that the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina has secured gas for only half a year.
Previously, the FBiH had always signed one-year contract annexes.
But Russia’s Gazprom has submitted an annex every six months, a precedent in talks on co-operation with Russia.
This information was also confirmed by the Federal Government. Although the contract will expire during the summer season, it can still pose a potential threat to regular gas supplies regardless of regular invoice payments. So far, the gas transit route has been via Ukraine and then through Hungary to BiH.
Recently, Russia has reached an agreement with Turkey that gas delivery will go to the Turkish Stream pipeline. However, the FBiH has leased gas transportation through Hungary until 2023, through an annex signed in 2015 by the former BH-Gas Authority.
This discrepancy between signing a six-month contract and leasing gas transport through Hungary by 2023 can, in real terms, create certain problems.
Especially because the FBiH Government does not even know why Russia sent an annex to the half-year contract because it had earlier reached a five-year gas supply agreement over Ukraine. The BH-Gas administration is negotiating intensively with the Hungarians to fulfill the transport contract.
Otherwise, the state would pay for gas transportation for a period for which it did not even contract delivery with the Russians.
