Bečarević on inevitable problems with payment and supply: Call Dragan for gas!

By Almir Bečarević

The company BH-Gas approached the Federal Ministry of Spatial Planning on 06/28/2021 to obtain urban planning consent for the "South Interconnection" project.

After 3 years, on 05/13/2024, the ministry refused to issue urban planning consent for the project. This has returned the project to the beginning, and it has not been registered that an appeal has been filed, i.e., administrative litigation initiated.

At the same time, payments to the EU for energy resources through Gazprombank will likely become impossible at the end of 2024, Sinara Investment Bank announced. The reason is that the US has imposed sanctions on Gazprombank, thereby creating conditions where anyone taking gas from Gazprom and continuing to pay for gas, directly or indirectly, will be placed on the list of sanctioned companies.

For three years of wallowing in mud over urban planning consent, the South Interconnection could have been built, and these new sanctions on Russia would not have affected us, nor would we have to think about this. The South Interconnection is a new source of gas and supply security. Now we have none of that, nor the law that was already adopted by the House of Representatives of the Parliament of FBiH.

Since the beginning of 2023, the authorities have been talking about sending the law into procedure, and to this day, it has not happened. What has happened is that the HDZ refused to issue urban planning consent and blocked the adoption of the law. In Sarajevo, 110,000 households are gas users (individual consumers and Toplane Sarajevo), and one day without gas in January is a drama that was already seen in 2009.

That drama lasted 72 hours, and now the complete gas supply is in question because with payments to Gazprombank becoming questionable, the gas supply is also in question.

The alternative is complicated because the contract with FGSZ (Hungarian transporter) was terminated, as was the one with Transportgas Serbia.

Gas sources in winter months are limited, as are transport routes, because everyone takes gas at peak times.

Lost years, lost urban planning consent, lost law, and therefore, "Call Dragan for gas, but cheap gas".