Serbia and Bulgaria sign Memorandum on construction of gas interconnector – Pipeline to become operational by 2020, value of Serbian section EUR 80 million

Minister of Mining and Energy of Serbia Aleksandar Antic and his Bulgarian colleague, Temenuzhka Petkova, signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the construction of the Bulgaria-Serbia Gas Interconnector, a very important project for both countries, on Thursday, January 19, 2017, in Sofia.

Aleksandar Antic said that the signing of the Memorandum was the most important step in the realization of the project.

– We have thus defined all the key elements of the project, all the joint technical elements, access points, capacities, all the key issues related to the realization of the project – Antic said.

He pointed out that Bulgaria had defined the financing of the project as an EU member-state and added that the Serbian side would do the same in the coming days.

Antic expects that the project would be encompassed by the IPA financing for 2017 and that Serbia would have operational assets as soon as 2018 and that the interconnector would, therefore, become operational in 2020, in line with the necessary dynamics of the project realization.

During his meeting with Petkova, Antic was informed of the dynamics of the realization of the project of the interconnector between Greece and Bulgaria, and he highlighted as the crucial factor that the project of the Bulgaria-Serbia interconnector was fully in line with the dynamics of the realization of the said project, which would lead to both interconnections, Greece-Bulgaria and Bulgaria-Serbia, being operational in 2020.

– This brings our two countries in the position of having contact with sources of gas supply from the other side as well, that is, from the south corridor, but also from the energy terminal which is to be built in Greece, by which I mean the Alexandropoulos terminal above all – the minister said.

As he says, the Government has adopted the urban plan for the special project of the construction of the pipeline. We have ahead us the process of expropriation, purchase of land, a whole range activities preceding the actual works, Antic says and notes that the two countries have obliged to start with the works no later than 2019.

Minister of Energy of Bulgaria, Temenuzhka Petkova, said that her country had received EUR 45 million from the EU for the construction of the interconnector, that the first phase had been completed, and that the second one, the key phase of the construction, was to follow.

The pipeline should become operational by 2020, and, as Tanjug learns, the Serbian section should cost up to EUR 80 million. EUR 50 million from the European funds has been negotiated so far.

The signing of the Memorandum was also attended by the director of Srbijagas, Dusan Bajatovic, and Ambassador of Serbia to Bulgaria Vladimir Curgus.

Ministarstvo rudarstva i energetike Republike Srbije

JP Srbijagas Novi Sad

Ambasada Republike Srbije u Bugarskoj

Aleksandar Antic

Temenuzhka Petkova

Bulgaria Serbia Gas Interconnector

IPA funds

European funds

Greece Bulgaria interconnector

expropriation of land

Dusan Bajatovic

Embassy of Serbia in Bulgaria

Vladimir Curgus