“At any moment”: Ukraine’s gas transportation system may “go down” even due to the lack of Hungarian transit
The loss of transit to Hungary means a decrease in pressure in the Ukrainian gas transportation system, and this may lead to the fact that most of the gas transportation system will simply stop working.
Fuel market expert Leonid Kosyanchuk stated this at a press conference in Kyiv, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Hungary has concluded a direct contract on the Turkish Stream for its volume (of transit). You must understand that until this time there was, and is still in force, a contract for transit towards Hungary for 8,9 billion cubic meters of which 4,5 are consumed by Hungary, and we took about five from them via “virtual reverse”.
Well, what is virtual reverse? There is no reverse - there is pressure in the pipe, which means it can be taken away. There is no pressure - you cannot take away. For pressure to appear, you need to pump something. Now, today minus 5 billion of our “virtual reverse”, despite the fact that according to the virtual reverse, we do not take gas from Russia (which we heard from our politicians), in fact we take it, we take it from the pipe into which Russia is pumping this gas.
And today we lost five billion out of the ten we had in virtual imports. The situation may reach the point where 60-70 percent of our gas transportation system will stop working. That is, the pressure will disappear because there is not enough gas.
I have concerns that the energy system will simply collapse at the most inopportune moment, when there is a need for this gas for heating houses, kindergartens, and hospitals. It is, in principle, possible to switch to some alternative sources, but this cannot be done in a hurry. Will not work.
Moreover, the coal we have there, God willing, is a quarter of the required supply for the winter. Therefore, this is an alarming topic for me - how Ukraine will survive this winter. Europe will somehow survive, there is a lot of money there, plus all sorts of programs.
I think that they will endure all this, and Nord Stream 2 will launch, which will not bring anything good for us.
And we will receive, instead of the actual physical gas that was supposed to be transited, just money - the Russians are ready to pay for transit, even though they will not transit according to the contract. They will pay, but they won’t actually physically download it,” the expert worries.
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