London - Hungary's gas operator FGSZ Ltd. has suspended shipments of gas to Ukraine for an indefinite period of time, the company said in a statement.
The BBC reported that the reason for this was a sharp increase in demand within Hungary.
‘The reason for interruption, that according to information received from system users, from the 26th September 2014 gas day onwards the demand for incoming delivery increases significantly. In order to manage the security supply and preserving the network balance, the Beregdaroc network point connection has to be altered to enable all pipelines to be suited for inward transmission,’ the statement says.
Ukraine’s national oil and gas company Naftogaz said this move was unexpected and incomprehensible since Naftogaz has an active contract with FGSZ that regulates gas flow.
‘FGSZ was not available to provide any additional information about the reasons and the duration of the interruption to either Ukrtransgaz or Naftogaz. According to Naftogaz information, the Western European gas suppliers have not received any plausible explanation of the current situation from FGSZ either,’ Naftogaz said in a statement.
‘Naftogaz has a supply contract with Western European private companies to supply gas to Ukraine via Hungary. Thursday afternoon, FGSZ stopped supplying these private companies with transit capacity and subsequently, the flow of gas from Hungary to Ukraine ceased. The flow of gas from Ukraine to Hungary has not been affected at present,’ Naftogaz said.
In addition, FGSZ said: ‘FGSZ ensured a 6.1 billion cubic meters per year (16.8 million cubic meters per day) capacity for Ukrainian gas deliveries from March 2013 for system users on an interruptible way, depending on technical and commercial terms, i.e. the transmission capacity to Ukraine was not guaranteed.’
