Natural gas

An energy company in Bosnia's mainly Serbian entity, Republika Srpska, has threatened to suspend delivery of gas to the city of Sarajevo by the end of February, unless an agreement is reached on prices.

Its dispute is with the energy company BH-Gas, which is owned by the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia's other entity.

Europe will soon experience a gas shortage and price spike if it tries to rely on U.S. gas imports to cover rising demand instead of increasing purchases from Russia, Kremlin energy giant Gazprom told Reuters.

Turkey began operations of its second floating liquefied natural gas unit (FSRU) with 20 million cubic meters of send-out capacity per day, Energy Minister Berat Albayrak announced late on Feb. 7.

A natural gas explosion at a high school in the western Turkish province of İzmir killed one person and wounded four on the morning of Feb. 6.

More than 50 percent of the construction pipeline that will supply Turkey with Russian natural gas under the Turkish Stream project has been completed. 

Iraq agreed a deal with U.S. energy company Orion on Jan. 22 to process natural gas extracted at its giant Nahr Bin Omar oilfield.

Bosnia and Herzegovina will hike the retail price of fuel as of February 1, the first increase of this year.

A new Excise Law, adopted in mid-December, after almost a year of the negotiations, long debates in parliament and amid resistance from opposition parties, came into force at the beginning of January.

Consumer prices in Bulgaria increased by 2.8 per cent on an annual basis in December 2017. The average annual inflation for the previous year compared to the previous one was 2.1%. For comparison, the average annual inflation rate in 2016 was negative (-0.8%). Thus, the indicator returns to positive territory for the first time in three years, according to NSI data.

Bank Hapoalim wants to take a more active role in Israel's growing natural gas sector and hopes to lead funding for two offshore gas fields being developed by a Greek energy firm, a bank official said on Wednesday.

The first line of the TurkStream natural gas project will reach the Turkish shore in May of this year and will be in service at the end of 2019, the project management team told state-run Anadolu Agency in an exclusive interview on Jan. 5.