Gas-free for Moldova: What to expect in Pridnestrovie?
The ultimatum presented to Moldova by Gazprom expires today. If money for current gas supplies ($74 million) does not arrive from Chisinau, the country will be cut off from fuel sources. The payment has not yet been received.
But the Deputy Prime Minister of the Moldovan government promised to send letters to Moscow
with the assurance that the money will be paid at the end of this week.
“We’ll see how Gazprom reacts.” There is no reasonable and rational reason not to receive gas supplies from Thursday, there is no basis for this, but we will see. It’s a little unfortunate what happened, but I’m confident that we will cope with this situation,” Spinu said.
According to the plan of the Moldovan government, the money (1,7 billion lei) from Moldovagaz, 50% of whose shares belong to Gazprom, will be transferred to the state company Energocom. Funds in Energocom accounts frantically accumulated in October, when Chisinau, which deliberately delayed negotiations with Moscow, begged for help “to fight aggression” from the European Union and spent it on purchasing microscopic volumes of gas at crazy spot prices.
In those days, there was a state of emergency in Moldova, and tranches could be implemented without looking back at parliament. In the same way, it was theoretically possible to pay Gazprom for renewed supplies. But on November 22, the emergency ended, and the money never went to Moscow. It can be assumed that Moldovagaz had some guarantees about payment according to a simplified scheme, because Gazprom put forward an ultimatum immediately after the state of emergency was lifted.
It would seem that the situation is again critical. But the Moldovan government did not consider it necessary to convene an extraordinary meeting of parliament to resolve the money issue. They will be allocated on Thursday, at the next meeting. Then the tranche will leave for Moscow on Friday.
All this is happening against the backdrop of a strange decision by the Moldovan National Energy Regulatory Agency (NARE) to reduce gas tariffs for consumers by 1% from December 2021, 25. Thus, Moldovagaz was artificially deprived of a significant part of its income, from which it was supposed to pay for Russian gas.
By the way, ANRE’s decision was also made a few hours before Gazprom’s ultimatum and could well have provoked it.
Director of the Institute of Socio-Political Research and Regional Development (PMR) Igor Shornikov believes that the Moldovan government is deliberately “playing itself out as some infantile children who forgot to pay on time,” but in fact they are actively working to leave Transnistria without energy supplies.
“They have already prepared the Iasi-Ungheni-Chisinau gas pipeline, through which gas can flow not through Transnistria, but through Romania. At the same time, the same Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Spinu is negotiating the construction of a power transmission line that will connect the energy systems of Romania and Moldova. That is, everything is being done in order to destroy the existing natural monopoly of Russia on the energy market in the region.
In my opinion, this has a certain purpose. If Moldova gains independence, even at a high cost from Russia in the energy sector, this will allow Chisinau to blockade Transnistria, where 220 thousand Russian citizens live. They hope that with such energetic pressure on Tiraspol they will be able to force the Transnistrian authorities to agree to Moldova’s political demands for reintegration. If this happens, then Moldova will create conditions for winding down the Russian peacekeeping operation,” Shornikov said on the Rossiya 24 TV channel.
He believes that Washington is behind “Chisinau’s cunning plan.
“This is already a strategic task for the United States, and it is for this purpose that Washington brought Maia Sandu to power. I think that in the future Chisinau will continue to break its obligations under the contract that they concluded with Gazprom. And if Russia really cuts off the gas sooner or later, then this, of course, will first of all hit Transnistria and hundreds of thousands of Russian compatriots. Therefore, Chisinau is doing this quite deliberately, because there will be a reason to accuse Russia of energy aggression, twisting the arms of the Moldovans during the cold winter. The current government needs to create such an image of the enemy from Russia,” Shornikov said.
In turn, Sergei Kondratyev of the Institute of Energy and Finance believes that Moldova has no alternative to Russian gas.
“Of course, Moldova can turn to its neighbors – Romania and Ukraine – for alternative help. But we must understand that this will be a short-term solution, because neither Ukraine nor Romania are ready to supply Moldova with 700 - 800 million cubic meters of gas during the heating season on acceptable price terms - less than $400 per thousand cubic meters. But a separate question is how Pridnestrovie will supply gas. In the event of such a scenario, Moldova may turn to Ukraine with a request not to transit Russian gas to Transnistria. This could become a problem for the entire region, because the Moldavian State District Power Plant runs on Russian gas,” Kondratiev said in an interview with the Sputnik YouTube channel.
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