March 13 (SeeNews) - Serbia’s government said it aims to begin construction of the 128-km cross-border oil pipeline with Hungary, worth 150 million euro ($163.9 million), in 2025.
Once operational, the capacity will be about 5 million tonnes of oil per year, Serbia’s energy minister Dubravka Djedovic Handanovic said in a press release on Tuesday after the Balkan Forum in Budapest.
Serbia gets its oil via the JANAF oil pipeline from Croatia but these shipments fell under EU sanctions after the bloc introduced restrictions against Russia in 20200 over its war against Ukraine.
The new pipeline will provide Serbia with Russian Urals crude via the Druzhba oil pipeline that runs via Ukraine to Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
Serbia and Hungary signed the agreement for the cross-border pipeline that will stretch from the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad to Algyo, in Hungary last year.
In November, local media quoted Djedovic-Handanovic as saying that the construction work on the Serbian territory will be carried out by state-owned oil storage operator Transnafta.
$ = 0.9153 euro