In these conditions, the management of Eustream identifies as a priority area of activity for the medium-term perspective the improvement of the efficiency and flexibility of the use of the national gas transmission system due to the strengthening of its role in the natural gas markets of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
As part of the further development of the gas interconnector project “Poland-Slovakia” (PL-SK), the Eustream company plans to increase the technical capabilities of gas transportation to 12.8 bcm of gas per year in the direction of Poland and to 10.9 bcm of gas by 2027 per year towards Slovakia.
From the beginning of putting PL-SK into operation on November 12, 2022 and including commercial gas supplies from the Polish side through the connection point (TP) Výrava are not carried out. According to the available information, the SR can expect to receive energy resources through PL-SK starting in 2027, after the commissioning of the Polish LNG terminal in n.p. Gdansk (with a capacity of 11.4 bcm of gas/year). It is expected that the Polish side will export up to 2 billion cubic meters of gas/year to the SR, which may create conditions for replacing Russian supplies in the interest of domestic consumption in the medium term.
During this year, Eustream will also implement investment projects to increase the capacity of the Baumgarten TK, which will allow up to 15.3 bcm of gas/year to be transported to Slovakia (including 8.7 bcm of gas/year) from the gas the Baumgarten hub (Austria) and increasing the capacity of the TK with Hungary’s Veľké Zlievce to 5.35 bcm of gas/year.
The company’s management expects that in the medium term, the Slovak GTS will be able to take part in the redistribution of gas flows in the CEE region and participate in the transportation of energy resources in the following directions (volumes):
Due to the implementation of the above-mentioned measures, the management of the Eustream company expects to increase the efficiency of the use of the Slovak GTS up to 36%.
The owner of 100% of Eustream’s shares is the Slovak company SPP Infrastructure a.s., legal address Mlynské nivy 44/a, 825 11 Bratislava. 49% ownership and management control in SPP Infrastructure belongs to the Czech energy holding Energetický a průmyslový holding a.s. (EPH), Pařížská 26, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic. 51% of Eustream’s shares are owned by the state through the Ministry of Economy of Slovakia.
Eustream owns 15% of the shares of the gas hub operator in Baumgarten – Central European Gas Hub AG, registered address Floridsdorfer Hauptstraße 1, 1210 Vienna, Austria and 100% of the shares of the project operator Eastring B.V., registered address Lange Voorhout 82, 2514EJ’s-Gravenhage, Netherlands.
The transport system owned by Eustream consists of 4/5 parallel pipes with a diameter of 1200/1400 mm, a maximum working pressure of 7.35 MPa and a total length of 2376 km. Slovak GTS is capable of transporting up to 90 billion cubic meters of gas per year. The pressure required for a stable gas flow is provided by four compressor stations with a capacity of 450 MW each. The most important is the compressor station located on the Slovak-Ukrainian border in the village of Veľké Kapušany. The joint technical capacity of the checkpoints from Ukraine and Poland (Veľké Kapušany, Budince and Výrava) is 215 million cubic meters per day, which is 78.5 billion cubic meters per year.
Currently, the combined daily capacity of all interstate gas pipeline connection points on the Slovak border, in particular with Austria (Baumgarten), the Czech Republic (Lanžhot), Ukraine (Veľké Kapušany, Budince), Hungary (Veľké Zlievce) and Poland (Výrava) is 411 million cubic meters gas All existing connections between the EU member states, as well as with Ukraine in the Budince TK, allow for the physical flow of gas in both directions.
