Russians to stop shipping gas to Serbia via Ukraine in 2019

Russians to stop shipping gas to Serbia via Ukraine in 2019

"It's certain that in 2019 Russia will shut down transit through Ukraine, and Serbia will be left without the most important and practically the only route of supply," said Bajatovic.

He added that the country is in this respect completely open to all other options, but wondered "which of them will be possible, and at what price."

"Whether it be Russian or American gas or gas from another country, from shales, is not so important, but for now there are no technical possibilities for its delivery and no clear calculation as far as cost-effectiveness," he said.

Bajatovic added that Serbia "must and wants to" build a gas interconnection with Bulgaria as a transitional solution, but asked the European Union "why Serbia has not received 60 million euro guarantees like Bulgaria, but instead only 16 million."

Reacting to this, Freek Janmaat from EU's Delegation in Serbia said that the EU is "ready to allocate a generous sum of money for the project."

Bajatovic then responded by saying: "That's what I wanted to hear, that's the reaction I wanted to provoke."

Bajatovic then said that "those 60 million" will be nowhere near enough to make that gas supply route functional - "because it would take an additional 208 million euros to build internal gas pipelines through Serbia."

According to Bajatovic, the region of Southeast Europe, including Serbia, is the victim of bureaucratic and political disputes between the EU and Russia and that "some kind of gas supply will have to be established, whether it's a pipeline or liquefied gas from shale."

"I can't wait to see how this fight for this market will unfold," he remarked.

In the meanwhile, Bajatovic said, Serbia is talking to Gazprom about gas deliveries from Baumgarten, Austria, "and is working to expand Banatski Dvor and Srpski Itebej (gas storage facilities) - and there should be the guarantee of its gas security."