AKTOR Buys Into Greek Gas Terminal

AKTOR Group signed a framework agreement on 9 July to buy half of Dioriga Gas from Motor Oil, the company behind a planned floating LNG terminal on Greece's Corinthian Gulf (Protothema). For now, it is only an agreement on basic terms. Definitive contracts, board sign-offs and regulatory clearance still have to follow. But the move tells its own story: two of Greece's biggest industrial groups are putting themselves behind the idea that southeast Europe needs another door through which gas can enter. The harder question is whether the buyers are there.

The corridor has money behind it. The terminal does not.

Dioriga is planned as an FSRU, a floating storage and regasification unit. In plain terms, it is a ship-sized facility where LNG tankers unload liquefied gas, which is then warmed back into ordinary gas and sent into the pipeline network. Motor Oil says the project has the required permits and studies (Enikos). There has been no independent confirmation of a construction start date or binding customer bookings.

The commercial case rests on the Vertical Corridor, a south-to-north gas route that the EU treats as part of its diversification agenda under CESEC, the Central and South Eastern Europe Energy Connectivity framework (European Commission). The idea is straightforward: gas arrives in Greece by ship, is turned back into pipeline gas, and moves north through interconnectors towards Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova and Ukraine.

That route now has something more substantial than policy language behind it. In the first long-term capacity auctions at Sidirokastro, the Greek-Bulgarian border point, buyers reserved more than 45% of available capacity for the 2026/27 gas year and the four years after that (Protothema English). Capacity bookings matter because companies do not usually pay to reserve pipeline space unless they expect to use it. Metlen booked about 20 GWh/day; DEPA Commercial and Atlantic SEE LNG Trade took roughly 13 GWh/day between them.

Atlantic SEE, a joint venture that is 60% owned by AKTOR, separately booked 4.7 TWh annually in corridor capacity to move US LNG into the region before 2030 (To Vima). It is still trying to turn memoranda with Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine into binding 20-year contracts (Parapolitika).

Those bookings show demand for the route. They do not yet show demand for Dioriga itself. Existing Greek entry points are already oversubscribed, and the corridor only became attractive after operators cut the transit charge for the full Greece-to-Ukraine route from about €9.39/MWh to below €6/MWh (Euro2Day, Știripesurse). Those charges fall first on shippers, then feed into the delivered price paid by buyers. The fact that the route needed a tariff cut of almost 40% before companies would commit says plenty about how finely balanced the economics are.

Croatia and Romania already compete for the same buyers

Dioriga would not be arriving into an empty market. Croatia's Krk LNG terminal has been operating since 2021 and has expanded to 6.1 bcm/year of capacity (Poslovni). Romania's Neptun Deep offshore field, owned equally by OMV Petrom and Romgaz, expects first gas from 2027, with reported plateau output of about 8 bcm/year (HotNews). Both are looking at some of the same landlocked customers Greece wants to serve.

Who gains, who pays

If Dioriga works, the winners are clear enough. Motor Oil and AKTOR get a return, Greek transit infrastructure earns fees, and buyers in Bulgaria, Romania and the western Balkans gain another bargaining chip against existing suppliers.

If it does not work commercially, shareholders take the first hit. But energy infrastructure has a way of moving losses along the chain. Bulgaria has already had a lesson in how underused gas capacity can become a public problem. Its Botas-Bulgargaz arrangement locked in a reported €500,000 per day in fixed capacity payments regardless of actual use, until both sides froze the contract for 15 months (3e-news, BTA). When terminals or pipelines come with take-or-pay clauses, where a buyer pays whether or not it uses the gas, governments often end up absorbing losses through regulated tariffs. Consumers then pay, only more quietly.

Hungary and Slovakia, the furthest markets downstream, show the weakest pull. There is no public evidence that their grid operators or gas traders have committed to the Greek route. Their usual supply comes through TurkStream, and Greek LNG matters to them only if the final delivered price beats that alternative (Denník E).

The AKTOR-Motor Oil deal is really a bet on what southeast Europe's energy problem has become. The issue is no longer only finding gas. It is building routes that companies can use at a price that still makes sense. The corridor now has genuine bookings and tariff momentum. What it does not yet have is proof that the region needs this terminal, in this place, on top of the infrastructure already operating or under way.