RiTE Ugljevik will start delivering electricity to Slovenia no later than mid-January, based on the arbitration in favour of Elektrogospodarstvo Slovenije (now HSE).
It was announced that the supply would begin in 2024, but the director of RiTE Ugljevik Diko Cvijetinovic said that there would be a slight delay, adding that the contract has been finalised, and everything should be completed by mid-January.
Cvijetinovic did not specify whether an agreement had been reached regarding the repayment of the 130 million euros debt, which RiTE Ugljevik, along with one-third of the produced electricity, is obligated to pay to the Slovenian company.
In July, a Belgrade arbitration court ruled that RiTE Ugljevik had to pay 67 million euros in compensation to Slovenian state-owned electricity producer HSE. The court found that the Slovenian company is entitled to compensation for electricity not delivered by RiTE Ugljevik in the period from June 2011 to December 2021. In November, it was announced that the company would have to pay an additional 57.8 million euros in interest. In 2014, Slovenian company Elektrogospodarstvo submitted a lawsuit against BiH at the International Center for Settlement of Disputes (ICSID) in Washington, claiming the amount of 750 million euros. If BiH loses this dispute, with all interest it will be obliged to pay almost 1.5 billion euros. The arbitration proceedings started in late 2015.
During the construction of TPP Ugljevik in 1981, Bosnia and Herzegovina invested two-thirds of the necessary funds, while Slovenia invested the remaining funds. When TPP became operational in 1985, Slovenians required regular deliveries of produced electricity by the funds they invested in the construction. The civil war in former Yugoslavia interrupted this deal and deliveries have been stopped since then.
