Difficulties for Austria and Hungary: Russian gas will not come via Ukraine from 2025

The transit contract between Russia’s Gazprom and Ukraine’s Naftogaz expires in 2024. This means that ongoing natural gas deliveries to Europe will then end. This will put further pressure on the gas market. Half of Austria’s gas supplies still come from Russia.

The transit contract for Russian natural gas through Ukraine, which runs until the end of 2024, will not be extended. This will create supply problems for some European countries (including Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Italy). In the already very stressed market for natural gas in Europe, it will be difficult to find a replacement. Particularly because there is a lack of infrastructure and capacity to liquefy LNG as it is supplied through pipelines.

For Austria, for example, which still gets about 50 percent of its natural gas consumption from Russia, things will become difficult. Where should the Alpine Republic get the gas it needs? On top of that, Austria’s contract with Gazprom theoretically runs until 2040, so no major efforts have been made to secure itself. TurkStream continues to supply the Balkans, but the TransGas pipeline through Ukraine to Central Europe will be history by 2025. It would be possible to reship some natural gas through the TurkStream pipeline, but there is not enough capacity.

Austrians, Hungarians and Slovaks will likely have to prepare for higher gas prices than ever before. For example, imports must pass through Germany, where there are LNG plants. However, liquefied gas, which is imported primarily from the United States, is currently significantly more expensive than gas delivered via pipeline from Russia.