BELGRADE (Serbia), February 7 (SeeNews) – Serbia is interested in the import of natural gas from Romania and Azerbaijan through the section of Gazprom's TurkStream pipeline on its territory, in order to encourage competition, the Energy Community said.
A potentially cost-effective source of natural gas in Serbia, as well as in the region of Southeastern Europe (SEE), is Romania, as well as Azerbaijan,
Serbia's energy regulatory authority AERS said in a review of the structure of the natural gas market in the country, as quoted in a document posted on the website of the Energy Community on Thursday.
AERS maintains that the construction of an entry point into the Hungarian transmission system from Serbia will enable imports of natural gas from various sources which would have a positive effect on competition on the Hungarian natural gas market, the Energy Community said in a detailed opinion on the project for the construction of a section of TurkStream through Serbia.
Furthermore, liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Greece and Turkey are listed as potential sources, and gas from Iraq, Iran and the Mediterranean Sea are identified as hypothetical alternative sources by AERS, the Energy Community said.
In 2017, Serbian energy minister Aleksandar Antic said the country is in talks with Romania for the construction of a Mokrin-Arad natural gas interconnector. The interconnector is expected to have a length of 76 km and a daily capacity of 4 million cubic metres of gas. The estimated investment in the interconnector will total 43 million euro ($48.8 million), according to the investment plan of Romanian gas transmission company Transgaz [BSE:TGN] for the period to 2025.
Serbia hopes to start the construction of the section of the TurkStream on its territory in the first half of March 2019, the head of state-owned monopoly Srbijagas, Dusan Bajatovic, said in December. Construction works are expected to take seven to eight months to complete, Bajatovic added.
Landlocked Serbia imports 82% of the gas it needs from Russia through a pipeline crossing Hungary and Ukraine. The rest comes from domestic sources.
($ = 0.882 euro)