Hungary ready to resume supplies to Ukraine – minister

Hungary is technically ready to resume natural gas supplies to Ukraine from December, according to comments confirmed by the Hungarian prime minister’s office on Friday.

“Restarting shipments to Ukraine in December will have no technical obstacles if Russian shipments are completed,” energy affairs state secretary Andras Aradszki has said. Aradszki said this could happen as soon as Ukraine requested some volumes.

Deliveries into Ukraine stopped on 26 September. Hungarian grid operator FGSZ attributed the halt to an increase in shipper nominations to flow gas west into Hungary from Ukraine, making eastbound flows technically impossible.

Westbound flows have dropped since then, according to data from Hungarian grid operator FGSZ. Physical deliveries from Ukraine to Hungary slipped to an average of 20 million cubic metres (mcm)/day in the seven days to 19 November. This is 1mcm/day lower than the week before and 3mcm lower than October’s average daily rate.

In December 2013, when both east- and westbound flows at the point were recorded, the daily rate of gas supplied to Hungary was 21mcm.

A spokeswoman from FGSZ said the company would not be able to comment on when flows will resume to Ukraine until Monday.

In a recent interview with Ukrainskaya Pravda, the CEO of Ukrainian incumbent Naftogaz, Andrey Kobolev, said Hungary had promised to resume gas supply to Ukraine in December. The Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban had previously only said that flows could resume in January, when a new bi-directional pipeline with Slovakia will come online, boosting supply into Hungary.

Capacity booking platform

A new Regional Booking Platform for capacity auctions developed by FGSZ is live, according to a note out on Friday morning. The booking platform will host the first auction of bundled transmission capacity at the bi-directional Hungary-Romania interconnection point on 10 December.

The web portal for the platform can be found here .