The United States intends to establish gas supply routes in Eastern Europe to deliver liquefied natural gas (LNG) to a large underground gas storage facility (UGS) in western Ukraine in a bid to gain market control at the Central European Gas Hub, energy expert from the Russian Academy of Sciences Andrey Konoplyanik told Sputnik on Thursday
SIMFEROPOL (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th May, 2022) The United States intends to establish gas supply routes in Eastern Europe to deliver liquefied natural gas (LNG) to a large underground gas storage facility (UGS) in western Ukraine in a bid to gain market control at the Central European Gas Hub, energy expert from the Russian academy of Sciences Andrey Konoplyanik told Sputnik on Thursday.
Konoplyanik recalled the Three Seas Initiative (3SI), which was launched by 12 EU member states back in 2016. Also known as the Baltic, Adriatic, Black seas initiative, 3SI is pursuing the establishment of a vertical gas supply corridor, capable of connecting Eastern Europe's north and south, and thereby cutting off the radial-ring system of Russian gas supplies to Europe.
"The aim is to reach the underground gas storage facility in western Ukraine. It is the largest UGS facility in Europe with a storage capacity of some 32 billion cubic meters," Konoplyanik said.
Currently, as part of the 3SI plan, partners, including the US, Germany and the European Commission, are constructing a north-to-south supply corridor from the Polish LNG terminal Swinoujscie and Lithuanian LNG terminal Klaipeda, with creation of a pipeline interchanges that could pump gas in direct and reverse modes. A similar corridor is being built in the south from the LNG terminals in the Greek Aegean Sea and Turkish Marmara Sea, through the Greek-Bulgarian border and Trans-Balkan pipeline in the direction of the Ukrainian UGS, the expert noted.
"And here is the key point of Americans' idea. If regasified LNG comes to Ukraine's UGS, cutting into the middle of the Ukrainian transit corridor from Russia, this gas can further be delivered to the West via the existing pipelines built back in the Soviet period. And whoever controls the UGS in Ukraine controls the situation at the Central European Gas Hub in Baumgarten (Austria)," Konoplyanik said, adding that Russian gas currently flows to Italy and Germany through the Czech Republic, as well as to other countries of Northwestern Europe through the Ukrainian UGS.
The expert explained that this is the way of halting Russian gas supplies to Europe, which both the '10-Point Plan to Reduce the EU's Reliance on Russian Natural Gas of the International Energy Agency' and the REPowerEU plan of the European Commission seek to achieve.
Moreover, Poland and Bulgaria, whose long-term supply contracts with Gazprom were set to expire by the end of 2022, refused to pay for Russian gas in rubles late April precisely to instigate a termination of gas supplies from Russia, Konoplyanik added.
