Europe Feverishly Storing Gas, Sarajevans Face Icy Winter!

The gas crisis is shaking all of Europe, and according to publicly available data, BH-Gas is completely unprepared for such a situation, despite discussions about the gas crisis for a full eight months, writes the bh. news agency Patria.

Currently, all of Europe is feverishly filling natural gas storage facilities. Serbia is also facing limited gas supply, as Bosnia and Herzegovina's gas flow was reduced by 20 percent starting Wednesday. The Director of Srbijagas has already spoken with natural gas storage owners and arranged for the storage of 200 million cubic meters of gas in Hungarian facilities.

Almir Bečarević, former director of BH-Gas, stated in an interview with the bh. news agency Patria that he was fired precisely because he persistently warned that this would happen.

-  Serbia has filled its storage facility in Banatski Dvor to capacity with 450 million cubic meters of gas. Hungary has limited gas supply, meaning it has shut off all gas flows to Ukraine, the reason being the filling of storage facilities, as Hungarian storage facilities are not full, only around 40 percent. The goal is to fill all Hungarian storage facilities, which have a capacity of over five billion cubic meters – says Bečarević.

On our side, nothing is being done; people have just been watching and observing for eight months, meaning they don't even know what's happening around them.

This is also shown by a report on BHT's evening news on Friday, where BH-Gas officials claimed that the natural gas supply had not been reduced at all, while on Wednesday the inflow had already decreased by 20 percent, and now it is reduced by 35 percent.

-  They had eight months to prepare for what is happening now. I was fired for these reasons that are happening now, because I wasn't fighting a war, but rather convincing them that this would happen. And nobody wanted to listen to me. Now it's too late. There are solutions, but these are incompetent people who cannot find a solution, because you cannot seek one when you owe the Russians 10 million dollars starting tomorrow with the September invoice – Bečarević notes.

Given the extremely difficult situation, fears of an icy winter in Sarajevo are justified, and BH-Gas is evidently totally unprepared for such a situation.

Around us, the storage facilities are full to the brim, and no one has entered negotiations, nor have the Russians been asked what is happening. We have no resources, and now they say the worst fears have come true; I was talking about this eight months ago – Bečarević added.

Incidentally, the reduction was not felt because there is gas in the accumulation in the pipeline, and that is being consumed.

- This can last for seven to ten days. It is especially dangerous that they have been deceiving citizens all this time, as well as their own Government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which adopted a stress test full of lies and deception – Bečarević specified.