To diversify energy sources and reduce dependence on Russia, Serbia has signed a contract with Azerbaijan to purchase an additional million cubic meters of natural gas daily from November until April 2025, News.Az reports citing Balkan Insights.
A new contract between Serbia’s state-owned Srbijagas and Azerbaijan’s SOCAR, signed as Azerbaijan’s Minister of Energy Parviz Shahbazov visited Belgrade on Thursday, will secure Serbia an extra 1 million cubic metres of gas daily from November 1, 2024 to April 1, 2025.
Serbian Energy Minister Dubravka Djedovic Handanovic said in a press release that the deal “provides Serbia with additional security in gas supply during the coming winter”.
Shahbazov and Djedovic Handanovic also signed a memorandum of understanding on green energy cooperation.
In November 2023, Serbia and Azerbaijan signed an agreement in Baku to deliver Serbia some 400 million cubic metres of gas per year from 2024 onwards. The Serbian ministry said at the time that Azerbaijan should deliver up to 400 million cubic metres of gas per year from 2024 to 2026 and a billion metres a year after that.
Experts told BIRN this amount represented less than 15 per cent of Serbia’s domestic needs of roughly 2.5 billion cubic metres per years, almost all of which is imported, but said that “in terms of diversification of sources it is important”, especially in the context of a European Union strategy to end dependence on Russian energy. Currently, Serbian main gas supplier is Russia’s energy giant Gazprom.
Serbia’s last long-term contract with Gazprom expired at the end of 2021. In November 2021 the Serbian and Russian presidents agreed that, for the following six months, Serbia would continue to pay $270 per 1,000 cubic metres of natural gas. In May 2022 they agreed that a new three-year deal would be signed.
At a meeting with one of the Serbian government’s deputy prime ministers, Aleksandar Vulin, in early September, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that “Russia plays a crucial role in supplying Serbia with energy resources, doing so efficiently and at a high level, always in a timely manner and on favourable terms for Serbia”.
But he added “There are specific issues we must address in this regard”.
“For example, I am referring to the fact that our gas supply deals are set to expire in March 2025,” Putin said.
