June 13 (SeeNews) - Ukraine hopes to receive gas from Azerbaijani, to be delivered through the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) via Bulgaria and Romania, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko said.
"Ukraine fully supports this project. And today we agreed that we would be happy to diversify our energy sources and receive gas from TANAP through Bulgaria and Romania," Petro Poroshenko said at the inauguration ceremony of the TANAP gas pipeline in Turkey on Tuesday, according to a statement issued by the president's office.
Poroshenko also highlighted the key role of the project for deepening the region's energy security and widening energy prospects.
"I believe that in the near future we will find opportunities to attract natural gas from Azerbaijan, the Caspian Sea, not only to Ukraine but also to the entire region connected with the Ukrainian gas transportation system," Poroshenko said.
The TANAP pipeline will carry natural gas extracted from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz-2 gas field to Turkey. The pipeline's initial capacity is 16 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year, which is expected to increase to 31 bcm at a later stage.
On Tuesday, Bulgaria's gas transmission system operator Bulgartransgaz said the interim results of a feasibility study on a proposed Balkan gas hub project in Bulgaria show that the preferred option envisages a new entry point from Turkey.
The European Commission continues to strongly support the gas hub project, Klaus-Dieter Borchardt, director at the European Commission's Directorate B on the Internal Energy Market, was quoted as saying.
In December 2014, the Bulgarian government proposed to the European Commission to build an EU-funded regional gas hub near the Black Sea port of Varna to dispatch gas deliveries to the rest of Europe - to Greece, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia and, via those countries, to EU member states in central and western Europe, as well as to non-EU Serbia, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Bulgaria is heavily dependent on Russian gas supplies. The country imports almost all the gas required to cover its domestic needs from Russia via a single pipeline from Ukraine through Romania.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)