Natural gas

BUDAPEST - Hungary is willing to help Serbia secure the energy it needs and store natural gas for it, Serbia's Energy Minister Aleksandar Antic said on Tuesday.

Gas supplies from the Russian Federation to Romania returned to normal this Saturday, but there was no confirmation yet from state-owned natural gas monopoly Gazprom that Romania would next week receive the entire amount of gas imports, Minister-delegate for Energy Razvan Nicolescu told AGERPRES.

Austria announced Thursday a 15% decrease in deliveries of Russian gas.

It is yet to be established if the reason for the decline was technical, such as a damaged compressor station, or political.

At the same time, sources of Austrian energy group OMV said it had been informed by Russian partners about a supply reduction.

Slovakia starts shipping natural gas to Ukraine.

The Vojany-Uzhgorod reverse gas pipeline, which passed tests successfully in August, is to supply up to 10 billion cubic meters of gas per year to Ukraine at a price of USD 360 per 1000 cubic meters, down by USD 25 from the price offered by Russian Gazprom to Ukraine, according to reports of the Bulgarian National Radio.

By Henning Gloystein

LONDON - The European Union could ban gas exports and limit industrial use as part of emergency measures to protect household energy supplies this winter, a source told Reuters, as it braces for a possible halt in Russian gas as a result of the Ukraine crisis.

Less than 5% of natural gas consumption in Bulgaria is provided through domestic production, according to data of state-owned gas company Bulgargaz for H1, 2014.

Bulgargaz informs that local supply amounted to only 64 million cubic meters in the first six months of the year, down by around 1/3 compares to the level in H1, 2013.

Europe will remain heavily dependent on Russian gas supplies for at least the end of this decade and “potentially much longer”, Fitch Ratings has said.

The centre-left government in Romania has decided to postpone a planned 3-per-cent rise in the price of natural gas prices for households, due in October, following disagreements over gas exports with the European Commission.

Turkmenistan, holder of the world’s fourth-largest natural gas reserves, signed a $1.7 billion deal with a Turkish-Japanese consortium on Aug. 26 to build a gas-to-liquids plant as part of its strategy to maximize revenues from its gas riches.

The Romanian state reserves the right of postponing the implementation of the schedule for the liberalization of the natural gas price for households until a dispute with the European Commission is settled; therefore, this price will not increase on October 1 as previously scheduled, the Department of Energy informed in a release.