The owner of 100% of Eustream shares is the Slovak company SPP Infrastructure a.s., legal address Mlynské nivy 44/a, 825 11 Bratislava. 49% of the ownership rights and management control in SPP Infrastructure belong 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 the Czech Republic. Eustream owns 15% of the shares of the operator of the gas hub in Baumgarten – Central European Gas Hub AG, registered office Floridsdorfer Hauptstraße 1, 1210 Vienna, Austria and 100% of the shares of the operator of the Eastring project B.V., registered office Lange Voorhout 82, 2514EJ’s-Gravenhage, the Netherlands.
The transport system owned by Eustream consists of 4-5 parallel pipes with a diameter of 1200/1400 mm, with a maximum operating pressure of 7.35 MPa and a total length of 2376 km. The nominal total capacity of the interstate gas pipeline connection points on the Slovak border, which allow for the physical flow of gas in both directions, including with Austria (Baumgarten), the Czech Republic (Lanžhot), Ukraine (Veľké Kapušany, Budince), Hungary (Veľké Zlievce) and Poland (Výrava), is from 90 to 100 billion cubic meters of gas/year, with the country’s annual need for natural gas up to 4.3 billion cubic meters.
Eustream has the infrastructure capabilities to enter the Norwegian natural gas market (PL-SK interconnector + Baltic Pipe gas pipeline) and the global LNG market, in particular through the Polish LNG terminals Świnoujście (with a capacity of up to 8.3 billion cubic meters of gas/year), Gdansk (up to 6.1 billion cubic meters of gas/year in 2025), the Lithuanian LNG terminal Klaipeda (up to 3.75 billion cubic meters of gas/year), the Croatian LNG terminal Krk Island (with a capacity of 5.3 billion cubic meters of gas/year in 2027), and Romanian fields in the Black Sea.
Since the beginning of 2022, the volume of Russian gas transported through the territory of Slovakia has been constantly decreasing. According to the results of 2024, the total transit volume is up to 18 billion cubic meters of gas (in 2022 – 16.5 billion cubic meters; in 2021 – 27.9 billion cubic meters; in 2020 – 35.4 billion cubic meters; before the energy crisis of 2020 – from 60 to 70 billion cubic meters of gas).
A drop in energy resource transportation volumes to the level of 15 billion cubic meters of gas/year (use of less than 15% of the nominal GTS capacities) may lead to the unprofitability of Eustream’s commercial activities. At present, Eustream has not published financial statements for the 2023/2024 financial year, however, according to available information, transit revenues in 2024 reached 474 million euros, which is twice the company’s total revenues for the previous year (2023 – 176 million euros). A significant part of the company’s profit was provided by the sale of Russian energy resources, which Eustream receives from the transporter as payment in kind, on the European gas market.
In addition, the payment of dividends in favor of the state based on the results of 2023 was not carried out by the decision of the board of directors. This allowed Eustream to accumulate financial resources and use these funds to repay a debt bond in the amount of 500 million euros on February 2024, which was issued in 2015 by another company of the Czech energy holding SPP Infrastructure Financing B.V. (Netherlands) and guaranteed by Eustream. In two years, the repayment term of the second part of the loan of the shareholders of the EPH holding in the amount of 500 million euros expires, which will allow Eustream to eliminate its gross debt and restore the trust of international rating agencies and investors.
The next step of Eustream management, which will help to cope with the negative consequences of the cessation of Russian gas transit through Ukraine, is expected to increase gas transportation tariffs in 2025 (subject to approval by the Slovak government). The government think tank “Council for Fiscal Responsibility” expects a significant decrease in dividend income for the state from Eustream in the medium term. Budget planning assumes that dividends from the GTS operator will amount to 300 million euros in 2024 and will decrease to 139 million euros in 2027.
