Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borisov said on Friday that
European Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic had assured him a planned gas
link between Bulgaria and Greece would be financed with EU funds.
“I have
the assurances of Sefcovic and all my counterparts that it [the Bulgaria-Greece
gas interconnector] will be financed by the Commission,” Borisov said after a
European Council meeting in Brussels, as quoted in a government press
release.
The Gas Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB Pipeline),which
will be 182 km long, will start in the northeastern Greek city of Komotini and
end at Stara Zagora in Bulgaria. It is estimated to cost 220 million euro ($235
million). It will carry 3 billion cu m of natural gas annually in its initial
stage and will have a maximum capacity of 5 billion cu m per year. It will
eventually be connected to the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), carrying natural
gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe through Greece. The IGB Pipeline is scheduled
to be operational by 2018.
The pipeline is an essential part of a
vertical gas corridor connecting Bulgaria, Greece and Romania, which the three
countries have committed to develop. Parallel to that, Bulgaria and Serbia have
stepped up work on a gas interconnector linking the two
countries.
Bulgaria is working on a number of other gas projects to
ensure its gas diversification, Borisov also said in Brussels.
Earlier on
Thursday, Bulgaria's gas transmission system operator Bulgartransgaz opened a
joint tender with Romanian gas transmission company Transgaz for construction
works on an underwater section of the Bulgaria-Romania gas interconnector. The
entire gas link, estimated to cost 24 million euro ($25.5 million), will have a
maximum design capacity of 1.5 billion cu m a year.
Securing alternative
gas supply routes has come into sharper focus for the countries in Southeast
Europe after Russia announced, in December, it had abandoned plans to build the
South Stream gas pipeline, which was planned to carry gas from Russia under the
Black Sea, making landfall in Bulgaria and then continuing through Serbia and
Hungary towards Austria.
Borisov also said that Bulgaria has still not
received formal notice about the termination of the South Stream gas pipeline
project.
Bulgaria imports about 90% of the natural gas it needs from
Russia through a pipeline crossing the territories of Ukraine, Moldova and
Romania.