Serbia started the construction of an 85.5 million euro ($96.8 million) link to Bulgaria's gas distribution system, its government said on Tuesday.
The 109 km Nis-Dimitrovgrad pipeline, with a capacity of 1.8 billion cubic metres of gas annually, will be ready for operation by October 2023, prime minister Ana Brnabic said during the groundbreaking ceremony, as quoted in a government statement.
A total of 25 million euro of the project costs will be covered by a loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB), 49.6 million euro by a grant from IPA, 10.3 million euro from the Serbian budget and 600,000 euro from own sources of state-run gas monopoly Srbijagas, Brnabic said.
The project includes the construction of two gas pipes and four measuring and regulating stations with the adjacent facilities, the government said.
The interconnector between Bulgaria and Serbia is one of the priority projects of the High-Level Group on Energy Connectivity in Central and South-East Europe (CESEC), established by the EU in 2015 to facilitate the quick completion of cross-border and trans-European projects that diversify gas supplies to the region. In 2020, the European Commission approved a grant of about 28 million euro for the construction of the Bulgarian section of the gas link.
(SeeNews, February 1, 2022)
