The Czech Trade Minister and likely next EU Energy Commissioner has urged incumbent Kadri SImson and Berlin, Budapest, Bratislava and Vienna to step up their efforts to wean the bloc off of Russian gas.
The Czech Minister of Industry and Trade, Jozef Sikela, has suggested in a letter to the EU Energy Commissioner, Kadri Samsonand their counterparts in Budapest and other countries that do not allow entry of Russian gas into Europe through the back door following the expiration at the end of the year of the gas transit agreement between Gazpromcontrolled by the Kremlin, and Ukraine.
Sikela, Czech candidate for the next EU executive and favorite to take Simson’s seat, also sent the letter to his counterparts in Austria, Hungary y Slovakiawhich continue to depend on Russian gas imports, and to Germany, whose direct connection was definitively broken two years ago with the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline.
Energy supply as a weapon
The Czech minister has proposed that reverse gas flows through his country could be used to replace 40-42 million cubic meters of Russian gas which currently flow daily through Ukraine.
“Russia has repeatedly demonstrated that it is a unreliable business partner willing to use energy supply as a weapon to disrupt and destabilize our energy market and the entire economy,” Sikela declared in a statement on Thursday, September 5. “It is clear that nothing will change as long as their aggression against Ukraine lasts.”
Liquefied Natural Gas from “alternative suppliers”
The “most suitable” alternative supply could be the LNG importaccording to the Czech Ministry of Commerce, which points out that the viability of its plan has been increased by the decision of Germany to eliminate the controversial storage fees from January of next year.
“In case gas transit from Russia through Ukraine is interrupted, replacement supplies will have to be found mainly from alternative suppliers,” Sikela stated. “We have to avoid a situation in which we buy gas that is not formally Russian, but which could be exchanged for Russian gas en routeundermining our efforts to reduce dependence on Russian supplies.”
The difficulty of breaking dependence on Russia
Sikela stated that the EU has done ““substantial progress” in the reducing its dependence on Russian gas– which fell to 8% last year from more than two tenths before Putin launched his undeclared war against Ukraine in February 2022 – but told Simson and his fellow ministers that “nevertheless, we must intensify our efforts.”
While Hungary has been criticized by its EU partners for actively court Moscow and close new gas supply agreements since the start of the war, Austria imported a record 98% of its gas from Russia last Decemberand Slovakia also remains very dependent.
