September 29 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to proceed with implementation of BRUA gas link project, Romanian media reported on Friday.
Under the memorandum signed in Bucharest on Thursday, all countries have agreed on a reverse-flow gas interconnection, Romanian news agency Actmedia quoted the country's energy minister, Toma Petcu, as saying.
Romania has issued a building permit for the BRUA project on its territory and has conducted procedures for assigning the construction works, the energy minister added.
The BRUA project is developed in the context of the necessity to diversify the gas supply sources of the European countries, the transmission to the Central European markets of the Caspian Sea gas, the ensuring in the Bulgarian direction of a bidirectional transmission capacity of 1.5 bcm per year and the development of a transmission capacity of 1.75 bcm per year in phase I and 4.4 bcm Per year in phase II in the Hungarian direction. The pipeline will have a total length of 528 km.
In a separate statement, the European Commission said on Thursday it has launched two new working groups of the gas transmission system operators. The first one will help the implementation of reverse flow on the Trans-Balkan pipeline system, and the other on the so called Vertical Corridor between Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Hungary, both to be facilitated by the European Commission.