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The “Turkish (Balkan) Stream” gas pipeline through Bulgaria is ready to pass the first quantities of gas to Serbia. The procedure of technical acceptance of the gas pipeline is in progress, confirmed yesterday the executive director of “Bulgargtransgas”, Vladimir Malinov, for “Mediapool”.
According to the Bulgarian media, the gas pipeline is about to be filled. Since the pipelines of the Serbian and Bulgarian parts of the “Turkish current” were connected at the beginning of November, gas will start to reach our country after the acceptance of the works, which finally solved the problem of supplying this energy from another direction, not just through Ukraine.
Also ready is one of the two compressor stations on the route, Rasovo in Bulgaria. Russian gas will be transported from Turkey through Bulgaria to Serbia and Hungary. Construction of the “Balkan Stream” began in 2019 and, despite frequent threats from Washington and Brussels that construction of the “Balkan Stream” and the “North Stream 2” pipeline will be suspended to reduce dependence on Russian gas, work has been discontinued. completed.
Starting in January 2021, “Bulgartransgas” is expected to deliver 10-15 million cubic meters of gas per day. The head of “Bulgartransgas” recently confirmed that the operator has contracts for the plant’s capacities with non-Russian companies “Gazprom” or Swiss MET, which have reserved around 90 percent of the input capacity of the Turkish gas pipeline, which is 19.3 billion cubic meters of gas per year. The production capacity of Serbia is 12.7 billion cubic meters per year. Otherwise, the proceeds of the agreed fees for the transfer to Serbia are fixed.
With the completion of the construction of “Turkish Stream”, it can be said that the second part of the interstate agreement signed during the takeover of NIS, which provided for the construction of the “South Stream” gas pipeline, has been fulfilled. Since this gas pipeline failed due to Bulgaria, another “Turkish Stream” gas pipeline, which is being filled with Russian gas and that our country was building with Russia, continues to pass through Serbia.
During all that time, Serbia has not received any other offers of connection to any of the gas pipelines that do not flow Russian gas, not even American LNG, because it is obvious that this gas is not in quantities like Russian, which alone can cover the needs of this part of the Balkans and Europe. . Furthermore, LNG has always been more expensive than Russian gas.
As Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić stated during the visit of Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation: “Whenever we ask where that cheaper gas was, we do not get an answer.” We have built our gas pipeline and we have no problem with Russian gas. “
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