Vucic: Negotiations with Russians About Gas After May 10

The president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, stated today that the negotiations about the price of gas with Russia would begin after May 10 and added that Serbia was 100% dependent on Russian gas and that it also imported 60% of the oil from Russia, so that gas supply diversification was out of the question at that moment.

– What kind of diversification can there be? It is only two years from now that we will have the option of something coming from Serbia from somewhere, but the question is what. We are only just having the Bulgarian interconnector built, and the Bulgarians are publishing the tender in the upcoming days and then it takes at least 300 more days for them to build it on their side. What can we bring? From where? These things don’t fall from the sky – Vucic told the press in Berlin following his meeting with Annalena Baerbock, the German federal minister of foreign affairs.

He also reminded that Germany used 55% Russian gas and that energy sources were becoming a huge problem.

– We are now to start negotiating with the Russians, after May 10, about the price of gas and everything else. There are more problems with oil. Whether we will get it from the south route, that is, Janaf, because there’s no other option, and it remains to be seen who gets sanctioned or not – Vucic said.

According to him, in the past month, Serbia has been buying 60% Russian oil instead of Iraqi oil, because Russian oil is cheaper and comes through the Adriatic oil pipeline.

Vucic said that it was impossible at that moment to get oil through the Black Sea.

– What should be do now, get it by barges every day and not use the oil pipeline? That is what the Hungarians and the Slovaks, whose energy minister says that it will be hell and that it will destroy European economy, are complaining about – Vucic said.

He reminded that gas was important for the economy and that there was a large number of factories in Serbia with German capital and that, of the 15 biggest exporters, five were German companies, and that, among the 100 biggest factories in Serbia, 50 were German ones.

– We now need to urgently make oil storage facilities, which we are negotiating about with the British. We need to see how to expand the gas storage facilities, so as to have somewhere to put one billion cubic meters in two years, so that we would have enough gas for three months – said the president of Serbia.

He also pointed out that Serbia had the cheapest electricity, bread and edible oil in Europe and announced that, in the next days, the state would determine the quantities of food and energy that it had at its disposal.

president of Serbia

Aleksandar Vučić

Russian gas

Russian oil

Janaf

south route

Bulgarian interconnector

negotiations

price

storage facilities

construction