June 10 (SeeNews) - The construction of a natural gas pipeline in Bosnia's Serb Republic entity that is planned to link to Gazprom's TurkStream will cost some 300 million euro ($339 million), the Serb member of the country's tripartite presidency has said.
"The construction of the gas pipeline will be financed by Gazprom and we will participate as much as we can," Milorad Dodik told reporters on the sidelines of the 2019 International Economic Forum in Saint Petersburg, Russia over the weekend, according to a video file uploaded on the website of the Serb Republic's public broadcaster RTRS.
Dodik said more meetings on the matter will be held soon between the interested parties, with Gazprom expected to draw the design project of the pipeline section to the Serb Republic by the autumn.
Gazprom plans to build a string of its TurkStream pipeline for transmission of Russian natural gas to Europe from Turkey via Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary. Serbia has already started the construction of its 403 km-long section of the transit pipeline and plans to complete it in December.
To connect TurkStream to the Serb Republic, a separate pipeline will be built from Bijeljina, on the border with Serbia, to the entity's main city of Banja Luka.
The Serb Republic is one of the two autonomous entities that make up Bosnia and Herzegovina. The other one is the Federation.
Last month, Dodik said that the design of the Bijeljina-Banja Luka pipeline section in the Serb Republic had already been drafted in 2013 when it was supposed to connect to Cazprom's planned South Stream pipeline. Gazprom abandoned the South Stream project, designed to carry Russian gas to Europe across the Black Sea and via Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovenia to Austria, in 2014 over objections from the European Commission.
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