Bosnia: Gas prices under burden of Hungary transit fee
9. March 2015. / SEE Energy News
BiH pays the most expensive gas in Europe, not so much because of the purchase price of gas, which is not so high for BiH, but because of the transit costs through Hungary. Bosnia is faced with an incredibly inflexible, hard, and I would say almost exploiting behavior of Hungarian transmission system operator towards BiH gas, respectively Energoinvest, and there's really nothing BiH can do because it depends on the Hungarians, but if someone else supplied BiH market with gas purchased in Serbia, via existing pipeline across Serbia, then this would circumvent unbearable costs, but there is no legal framework in BiH for access of the third party stated Janex Kopac from Energy Community.
In the gas sphere our list of common interest has 35 projects for electricity and gas. Among these interesting for BiH, the most important is the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), gas terminal Krk, the connection between Croatia and BiH (Slavonski Brod – Zenica, Split – Travnik or Ploče – Mostar – Sarajevo). But all projects are unrealistic for now, and the most realistic is S. Brod – Zenica, but Dodik won't allow it stated Kopac.
The rest of projects are medium term, and they will be realistic in 10 years. In a year or two the most realistic are Niš – Dimitrovgrad between Serbia and Bulgaria, and the connection between the eastern Slavonia and western Vojvodina. This will have an impact on BiH as well, because they will be able to buy gas in Croatia and transport it via Serbia, Zvornik to Sarajevo or buy it in Greece and then via Bulgaria and Serbia to BiH. This will bring new opportunities, which may or may not be used, but it is important that there exist a possibility for competition concluded Kopac.