BELGRADE, November 11 Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said that he hopes to resolve with the Bulgarian leadership the issue of excise tax on gas transport from Russia, which could significantly increase the price of gas for Serbia.
On October 13, Bulgaria established an excise tax of 20 levs (10 euros) for each megawatt-hour of Russian gas transit. The new transit fee is approximately a fifth of the current TTF gas base price (€50 per megawatt hour). Typically, transit fees do not exceed 10% of the actual cost of gas. Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov said that Hungary and Serbia received an exception from sanctions on gas imports from the Russian Federation, and the introduced measure will increase competition in the gas market.
Vučić previously responded to Bulgaria’s introduction of an excise tax on the transit of Russian gas, in his words, “strange things are happening.” He clarified that Belgrade has reserved gas in storage facilities in Serbia and Hungary in the amount of about 700 million cubic meters.
“We have never had problems before this Bulgarian decision to increase the excise tax by 20%, which at the moment means an increase from 80 to 100 dollars per thousand cubic meters. But I hope and believe that with Mr. Nikolai Denkov and (the President of Bulgaria — ed. .) We can solve these problems with Rumen Radev,” Vucic told reporters on the sidelines of the Peace Forum in Paris.
The Minister of Mining and Energy of Serbia, Dubravka Djedovic-Handanovic, said at the end of October that the connecting gas pipeline (interconnector) between Bulgaria and Serbia will be ready in the first weeks of November, which will allow parallel with Russian gas from the Balkan and Turkish streams «receive gas from Azerbaijan and LNG terminals in Greece.
Vucic and Rumen Radev opened on February 1 the construction of an interconnector on Bulgarian territory to diversify supplies of blue fuel from Azerbaijan, Greece and other sources alternative to Russia. The Niš-Dimitrovgrad interconnector, which is under construction and is 109 kilometers long on the Serbian side, is expected to cost Belgrade about 90 million euros, of which 49.6 million are EU subsidies, and the European Investment Bank has provided a loan of 25 million euros. The capacity of the gas pipeline, according to the plan, will be over 1.8 billion cubic meters of gas per year. The Serbian authorities previously announced the planned purchase from Azerbaijan in 2023 through a connecting gas pipeline with Bulgaria in volumes of 1.4 billion cubic meters per year.
Currently, the largest supplier of natural gas to Hungary and the only one to Serbia is the Russian Gazprom.