The degradation of Ukraine's gas transportation system is as predictable as it is inevitable.
Last year, as Sergei Makogon, the head of the Ukrainian GTS Operator, wrote in his column in one of the Ukrainian publications, transit decreased by 38%, to 55.8 billion cubic meters.
m. This is the lowest figure in the last 30 years.
Makogon stressed that even in 2014, when the crisis in relations between Russia and Ukraine reached its peak, the volume of pumping amounted to 62 billion.
So far, Ukraine has not suffered in any way from the drop in transit volumes, since Gazprom has paid for all transit capacities booked for last year.
The “download or pay” principle, incorporated in the agreement signed between Russia and Ukraine in December 2019 at the insistence of the Ukrainian side, assumes that the money paid for transit remains with the transit country regardless of the volume of gas pumped.
However, this year the situation may change dramatically.
Moscow expected to complete the construction of Nord Stream 2 by the end of 2020, but this was not done due to US sanctions.
With a high degree of probability, the pipeline will be commissioned this year, although even after the completion of technical work, the passions around it will not subside.
Nevertheless, despite all the efforts of Washington, sooner or later gas will certainly go along this route, since without cheap Russian fuel, the economy of Europe, especially Germany, is uncompetitive.
In addition, the first line of the Turkish Stream was launched.
This means that Ukraine will miss 15 billion of transit in the new year.
Gas volumes for Hungary, Serbia and Croatia will be redistributed to the new route.
This is a logical decision.
Ukrainian transportation tariffs are prohibitively high, so Russia uses any opportunity to supply gas via bypass lines.
The problem is also that the Ukrainian GTS is extremely worn out.
An audit conducted a couple of years ago came to the conclusion that about $ 4 billion is required to repair and modernize the system. There is no such money in the Ukrainian budget.
Failure of key technological units is a matter of time.
Naturally, the Russian gas giant is not very comfortable working with such an unreliable partner.
The signing of the five-year contract was mostly a political decision.
Moscow tried to establish business relations with the new Ukrainian government, hoping that it would be possible to improve relations with Kiev.
That did not happen.
The team of Volodymyr Zelenskyy continued Petro Poroshenko's course of confrontation with Russia.
Accordingly, it makes no sense to give advances to Ukraine in the form of lucrative contracts.
There is another factor that gives grounds to predict a further, critical for the Ukrainian budget, decline in transit.
Gazprom is much more interested in the Chinese direction and the premium markets of Southeast Asia, which are now actively developing.
In general, things are not going well in Kiev right now.
And after the expiration of the gas transmission contract in 2024, it may turn out to be completely awful.
This is an almost inevitable outcome, since Moscow has no reason to grant economic preferences to its Ukrainian partners.
Unless the Ukrainian authorities will suddenly radically change their policy towards Russia and begin to establish good-neighborly relations.
Alas, such a prospect is not even visible.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.