Bulgaria, Serbia to speed up work on gas link

A working group of the Bulgarian economy ministry and the Serbian energy ministry is expected to specify by the end of the month the parameters of the gas link, the Bulgarian ministry said in a press release on Tuesday.

Bulgaria and Serbia signed a memorandum for the construction of the gas interconnector in 2012. Its parameters, however, need to be updated.

The Bulgarian site of the link is seen being financed through EU funds under the operational programme Innovations and Competitiveness.

Securing alternative gas supply routes has come into sharper focus for countries in Southeast Europe after Russia announced, at the beginning of December, that it had abandoned plans to build the South Stream gas pipeline.

South Stream was planned to carry gas from Russia under the Black Sea, making landfall in Bulgaria and then continuing through Serbia and Hungary towards Austria.

Last week, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece committed to develop a vertical gas corridor, connecting the three countries, while Bulgaria sent a letter to the European Commission proposing to build an EU-funded regional gas hub near the Black Sea port of Varna to dispatch Russian gas deliveries to the rest of Europe.