Study: Bulgaria to be Most Heavily Affected by New Ukraine Gas Crisis

Energy | March 19, 2015, Thursday // 14:02|  views

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In the event that a new Ukrainian gas crisis of a scale similar to the 2009 one is to occur, Bulgaria will be the most heavily affected EU state.

This is shown by a study, which notes the EU's improved capacity to deal with such disruptions, with only Bulgaria being incapable of substituting imports during a shorty supply interruption.

The study, which was conducted by the Institute of Energy Economics at the University of Cologne, is entitled “The 2014 Ukrainian Crisis: Europe's increased security position”.

According to the executive summary, the security of supply has increased since the 2009 pricing dispute between Ukraine and Russia, which left parts of Europe without gas supplies.

Four main factors have been identified as responsible for improving the security of supply and the overall resilience of the EU network.

The authors point that Europe's demand underperformed projections in the last five years and access to alternative supplies has also improved.

The other two factors are the increased transmission capacity and the implementation of more consistent and ambitious security of supply regulation.

Despite the optimistic outlook, the EU's security of supply position should be balanced with the less optimistic underperformance of its natural gas sector.

Although the EU continues to be largely supplied by Russia, it is less vulnerable to a gas disruption through its main transit route – Ukraine, than ever before.

In 2013 Gazprom sales represented 29 % of total EU consumption and 14 % of the Union's demand was transited through Ukraine.

Countries with high dependence on Ukrainian transit are all small gas markets with annual consumption below 10 bcm/y.

Bulgaria, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic all import a large share of their consumption through Ukraine, but only Bulgaria is unable to substitute these volumes.

Scenario simulations, conducted by the research team, showed that Bulgaria, Ukraine, Turkey and Macedonia would be hit hardest by a disruption.

Read the full study here.

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Tags: Bulgaria, EU, Ukraine, Russia, gas crisis, disruption, interruption, security of supply, natural gas, energy, transit, Gazprom

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