May 23 (SeeNews) - Bosnia's Serb Republic is interested in joining Gazprom's TurkStream natural gas pipeline project and will discuss the matter with the Russian company on June 2, the Serb member of Bosnia's tripartite presidency, Milorad Dodik, has said.
Dodik told state broadcaster RTRS on Wednesday that the construction of a pipeline from Bijeljina, on the border with Serbia, to the Serb Republic's main city Banja Luka is one of the items on the agenda for his forthcoming visit to Russia.
The Serb Republic is one of the two autonomous entities that make up Bosnia and Herzegovina. The other one is the Federation.
"I think it will be relevant if [officials] in Sarajevo and the Federation also discuss this subject in order to strengthen gas supply to entire Bosnia," Dodik said.
Gazprom plans to build a string of its TurkStream pipeline for transit 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 pipeline and plans to complete it by December 18.
According to RTRS, the design of the Bijeljina-Banja Luka pipeline section in Bosnia' 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.
The offshore section of the TurkStream pipeline stretching 930 km across the Black Sea from Russia to Turkey consists of two parallel strings with annual throughput capacity of 15.75 billion cubic metres of gas each. One string is intended for consumers in Turkey, while the second will carry gas to customers in Europe.