Moldovagaz denies violating contract with Gazprom - CEO
CHISINAU. Dec 9 (Interfax) - Moldovagaz has not violated its contract with Russian gas giant Gazprom , the Moldovan company's CEO, Vadim Ceban said on Thursday evening, responding to a reporter's question about Russian President Vladimir Putin's statements in this regard.
"Without going into details, I would like to note one aspect of this issue. The Republic of Moldova and natural gas market participants such as Moldovagaz and Energocom [the state company that supplies gas and electricity to distributors] and others abide by national legislation and the treaty on the establishment of the Energy Community," Ceban said on a Moldovan TV channel.
The system operators of Romania and Moldova, as well as Moldova and Ukraine, have interconnection agreements, he said.
"There are certain rules by which we operate, so I believe that there was no violation of the contract, at least on our part. The amount of gas that was sold on the wholesale market is surplus. We sold this amount to Energocom, which had the full legal right to store it where it wanted," Ceban said.
Putin said earlier on Thursday that "Moldova is storing some of the gas purchased from Russia in Ukraine," and asked the Energy Ministry to sort out this situation.
Gazprom cut daily volumes of gas supplies to Moldova 30% to 5.7 million cubic meters on October 1, while the country needs 8.06 mcm. Gazprom said the reduction is due to technical problems related to limited gas transit through Ukraine. Gazprom has confirmed that it will also supply Moldova with 5.7 mcm of gas per day in December, 43.5% of what is necessary during the cold period.
According to preliminary data, Moldova needs around 11 mcm of gas per day in December, two-thirds of which for the Transdniestria region where electricity is generated at Moldovan GRES. State-owned company Energocom and Moldovan GRES were unable to come to an agreement on the station's supplies of electricity to the right bank of Moldova amid the gas shortage in November. Moldovan GRES supplied 67% of the electricity needed for the right bank of the Dniester in October.
Moldovagaz cut supplies of gas to Transdniestria 40% from 3.9 mcm per day to 2.3 mcm per day in November in connection with Moldovan GRES declining to supply electricity to the right bank of the Dniester. This allowed Moldova to save a portion of the gas stored in storage facilities in Ukraine and Romania.
Moldova is expected to use a portion of this gas in December, and all gas coming in from Gazprom will go to Transdniestria due to Chisinau and Tiraspol signing an agreement on Saturday on the terms of supplies of electricity to the right bank of the Dniester at the expense of an increase in supplies of gas to Transdniestria.