Hungary suspends gas shipments to Ukraine as own demand increases
KYIV/LONDON. Sept 26 (Interfax) - Hungary's gas operator FGSZ Ltd. suspended shipments of gas to Ukraine indefinitely s of 7:00 p.m. on September 25 because its own demand for gas increased, the company said in a statement.
The reason for interruption is that according to information received from system users, from September 26, 2014 demand for incoming delivery had increased significantly. In order to manage secure supplies and preserve the network balance, the Beregdaroc network point connection has to be altered to enable all pipelines to be adapted for inward transmission, FGSZ said.
Ukraine's national oil and gas company Naftogaz Ukrainy said the supplies came to a halt hours before the trilateral gas meeting between Ukraine, Russia and the EU that was due to start in Berlin on Friday morning.
Naftogaz earlier said that it had a supply contract with Western European private companies to supply gas to Ukraine via Hungary. "On 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 has said.
FGSZ, for its part, said it had ensured a 6.1 billion m3/year (16.8 million m3/day) capacity for Ukrainian gas deliveries from March 2013 for system users in an interruptible way, depending on technical and commercial terms, i.e. the transmission capacity to Ukraine was not guaranteed."