April 3 (SeeNews) - Bulgartransgaz said on Wednesday that it has picked a tie-up comprising Saudi Arabia's Arkad Engineering and Construction Company and Italy-registered Arkad ABB to build a 484 km pipeline for transit of natural gas from the border with Turkey to the border with Serbia.
The consortium has offered to build the pipeline for 1.29 billion euro ($1.45 billion) within 250 days, or for 1.10 billion euro should the deadline be extended to 615 days, the state-owned Bulgarian gas transmission network operator said in its decision.
DZZD Consortium Gas Development and Expansion in Bulgaria, comprising Italy's Consorzio Varna 1 and the Bulgarian branch of Luxembourg-registered Completions Development, was ranked second in the tender, with price offers of 2.41 billion euro and 1.60 billion euro for the respective construction periods of 250 days and 650 days.
A third candidate, a tie-up of ОТ Industries Fovallkozo Zrt. and OT Industries – KVV Kivitelezo Zrt. was disqualified by Bulgartransgaz.
At the end of January, Bulgartransgaz successfully completed the binding Phase 3 of the economic test for the project - part of a larger project of Russia's Gazprom to build a string of its TurkStream pipeline for transit of gas to Europe from Turkey via Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary.
The offshore section of the TurkStream pipeline stretching 930 km across the Black Sea from Russia to Turkey consists of two parallel strings with annual throughput capacity of 15.75 billion cubic metres of gas each. One string is intended for consumers in Turkey, while the second will carry gas to customers in Europe.
($ = 0.8891 euro)