The citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina will have enough gas during the winter season. However, it is not yet known whether the prices will be higher from October, according to Energoinvest. When it comes to this, the Republika Srpska insists on the eastern connection as a priority, which implies the reconstruction and gasification of the heating plant in East Sarajevo. On the other hand, in the Federation of BiH they see it as a potential problem, because the project is not economically justified.
Energoinvest reminds that the price of gas offered by suppliers to distributors from January to the end of the third quarter of this year was reduced by 37.4 percent compared to the end of last year. What do citizens expect and do they have an alternative?
“Due to the method of determining the price of gas on a quarterly basis and based on the movement of input parameters in the past nine months, it is still too early to forecast the direction in which the price will move from October 2023,” emphasized Energoinvest.
BiH depends on Russia and Russian gas, said the director of Sarajevo-gas from East Sarajevo.
“The specific relationship of the Russian partners has even extended the debt that the Federation of BiH had. It will be enough. Technical cooperation is good, we also have correct cooperation with BH Gas”, Nedeljko Elek, director of Sarajevo-gas Istočno Sarajevo.
The Republika Srpska insists on the Eastern Connection project. The first step is the reconstruction and gasification of the heating plant in East Sarajevo. Speaking about priorities, the President of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik told his partners in Sarajevo: “Let us build the gas pipeline”.
“For twelve years, we have been waiting for someone to take pity on those Sarajevo factors and to get that permission and build a passage under the Drina and further strengthen the gas pipeline to the pipe to Sarajevo and to strengthen the gas pipeline to Banja Luka. If the Federation puts us in a position, we will under the Drina to be repackaged so that it will be used for our needs, we do not want that to happen, but we are put in a position to think about it”, Dodik explains.
The Prime Minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nermin Nikšić, assesses the cooperation in this segment between the entities as correct, while the cantonal minister Almir Bečarević sees the project of building the Eastern Connection as a problem because, he says, it is not economically viable. For its implementation, he adds, 70 million marks are needed.
“We are talking, agreeing, and in that context, we need to understand this story of the Eastern Interconnection. The government, in accordance with its competences, takes care and has communication, and that we will take care of the fact that there is enough gas in BiH”, Niksic adds.
“I am afraid that as part of that investment, that is, through the cost of transportation through the Republika Srpska system, the citizens of Sarajevo Canton will not ultimately pay for it. The gas pipeline that they want to build from Vlasenica to East Sarajevo is an area where almost no people live at all. where they don’t have any economic activities, and I don’t know, except for the citizens of the Federation, on which basis they base the fact that someone will return that investment to them”, Almir Becarevic, Minister of Communal Economy, Infrastructure, Construction and Environmental Protection of Sarajevo Canton.
According to Bečarević’s assessment, the price of natural gas could increase by ten to 15 percent already from the first of October, given that the price of oil on the world market is rising, BHRT reports.
