Moldovagaz on Saturday delivered the first 3 million cubic metres of natural gas to the breakaway Transnistria region in eastern Moldova, the first since gas transit through Ukraine was halted on 1 January, the company said. Moldovagaz’s general director Vadim Ceban said the deliveries are aimed at replenishing the gas system in Transnistria, which is already facing a shortage of gas to keep up the pressure. “This is not a political compromise, but a pragmatic (Chisinau’s) and humanitarian (the European Union’s) solution,” said Moldovan government spokesman Daniel Vodă.
Specifically, the Commission for Exceptional Situations (CSE) “channelled €20 million for the purchase of gas on the left bank of the Dniester and €10 million for the purchase of electricity on the right bank. All of this was purchased through the Moldovan company SA Energocom.” The government representative explains the advantages of this mechanism both on humanitarian grounds (“people on the left bank of the Dniester must shiver in the cold or be victims of a corrupt and opaque system”) and on pragmatic grounds: “If we had chosen passivity, we would have been accused of not caring about the people. Now, when we have acted quickly and intelligently, we are accused of giving in. The reality is that we took a rational decision with clear rules and full transparency.”
Through the mechanism launched these days, the government in Chisinau not only prevents a humanitarian crisis, provoked by and to the advantage of the Russian Federation, but also obtains more data on the real consumption in the Transnistrian region, involves the Tiraspol leaders in a game with “clear rules and levers of control over gas deliveries”, in coordination and with the support of the European Union.
The European Union has allocated a €30 million grant for Energocom to purchase natural gas for the left bank of the Dniester and electricity for the right bank. Of this amount, €20 million is earmarked for the purchase of natural gas for consumers on the left bank of the Dniester, including for keeping a block of the Dnestrovsc power plant, MGRES, in operation until 10 February. “These volumes are intended exclusively for the gas supply to protected consumers, a category that includes domestic consumers, social and public institutions and small businesses in the food industry, with the exception of large industry and cryptocurrency mining farms,” government officials in Chisinau said.
Tiraspoltransgaz undertook to submit every day the consumption chart for the next day, which will be approved by Energocom representatives up to 3 mln m3 of natural gas per day. Tiraspol requested 3.2 mln m3/day, which could not be justified by the submitted data. It was decided that the maximum possible volumes, but not more than 3 mln m3/day, will be delivered in the first days to prepare the centralised heating systems in the region.
In mid-January, the separatist administration was forced to “completely” suspend the supply of hot water for both heating and daily consumption, while gas is used only for food preparation. The breakaway breakaway region, with almost half a million inhabitants, has faced disruptions to heating, heating and electricity.
Transnistria, which has not been under Chisinau’s jurisdiction since the 1990s, was supplied free of charge by Russia’s Gazprom, but this gas transited Ukraine, which failed to renew the contract between Kiev and Moscow that expired on 1 January, leading to interruptions in heating and electricity.
The Republic of Moldova has been spared outages thanks to electricity and gas imports from Romania.