Hungarian experts said late Wednesday that the Ukraine-Russian
natural gas dispute has no winners. In the long term both parties
are losers as the European Union, their biggest customer, has now
pledged to find alternative sources in an attempt to avoid any
similar scenarios in the foreseeable future.
Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, economy minsiter Janos
Koka and Zsolt Hernadi, president of Hungary's dominant oil and gas
company Mol, said that following their evaluation of the
Ukrainian/Russian dispute Hungary would press the EU's new Austrian
Presidency to intensify its work for a common EU energy policy.
"It is evident that Russia (Gazprom) wants control over the
Ukrainian (Naftogaz) natural gas (and oil) pipeline." - Ferenc
Gyurcsany, Hungarian Prime Minister
"Just because gas supplies are normalized Hungary can not sit
back, but must instead diversify its energy resources and become
independent from dominating energy imports from Russia," said
Gyurcsany.
Zoltan Biro, historian and expert on Russian affairs said, "It is
evident that Russia
(Gazprom) wants control
over the Ukrainian (Naftogaz) natural gas (and oil) pipeline." He
added that the Ukrainian Government had been caught off guard by the
Russian move to hike prices and later even cut much needed natural
gas supplies after Russia had claimed that it wanted to also
"introduce a
market price" for natural
gas sold to the Ukraine. Biro said that Russia had for years accused
Ukraine of tapping the natural gas
transit pipeline going to
Central-Eastern and Western Europe.
Andras Deak, a security expert, said that Gazprom had carried out
the move to re-evaluate the distribution of the natural gas exports
to the west. "What we have seen now is merely a fore-play (of what
Russia is able to do) as the dispute only effected about 25% of the
Ukraine's natural gas consumption," he said.
Ukraine to be more dependent on
russia as turkmen gas contract ends
Deak added that this year Ukraine's natural gas agreement with
Turkmenistan, from where it gets about 50% of its gas, comes to an
end, meaning Ukraine will have to buy this gas also from Gazprom,
which has in turn secured the quota with Turkmenistan. "If the
dispute erupts again it will do so with a bigger blast and with
higher stakes," he said.
"Gazprom now has a bigger slice of the (natural gas
transit-export) pie than it had earlier." He sais the deal was also
"lucrative" for the Ukrainian political elite.
"Nevertheless in the three-day conflict, both Ukraine and Russia
are losers on the long run because the EU are now seriously turning
more attention towards researching and developing alternative energy
sources as a security measure." Miklos Hegedus, Director of Energy
Research Institute at economic think tank GKI in Hungary said, "The
recent compromise shows that market rules can not be avoided and
that (political) blackmail is never a solution."
Created on: Jan 3, 2006
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