BELGRADE (Serbia), January 13 (SeeNews) – Serbia will lose a total of 30 million euro ($32.5 million) it has invested in the South Stream gas pipeline project, which has been put on hold, the director of state-owned gas monopoly Srbijagas, said as quoted by local media.
Russia will not proceed with South Stream but sooner or later Serbia will start receiving gas from Russia via a different route, Dusan Bajatovic said in an interview for N1 TV channel on Tuesday night.
The South Stream gas pipeline, spearheaded by Gazprom, was planned to carry gas from Russia to central and southern Europe via Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovenia. The total value of the project was estimated at 16 billion euro ($17.3 billion). Commercial operation of South Stream was scheduled to start by the end of 2015 with the pipeline reaching its full capacity of some 63 billion cubic metres per year by 2017. The European Commission, however, said the project runs counter to EU law nd Bulgaria halted the construction works on its territory until it complies with the EU requirements. In late 2014 Russian president Vladimir Putin said Russia had decided to abandon plans to build the pipeline.
Bulgaria and Serbia are heavily dependent on Russian gas to meet their domestic needs.
Bajatovic also said he sees a chance that Serbia would start getting gas via the Tesla pipeline project.
The planned pipeline, with an estimated capacity of 27 billion cubic meters, is to start from Turkey, cross Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary, and end in Austria.
($=0.9237 euro)
Javno Preduzece Srbijagas is among the biggest companies in SEE. You can download our SEE Top 100 ranking
here or subscribe to our free Top 100 newsletter
here