On the sidelines of the European Council on Friday 29 June, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissov and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras signed a political statement on swift implementation of the Greece-Bulgaria gasinterconnection project (IGB).
The two countries stressed the need to begin the construction by the end of 2018 and make the interconnection operational by 2020, in time for the arrival of the first gas from the Caspian region to the European Union.
The IGB will connect Bulgaria to the southern gas corridor, a series of linked pipelines stretching from the banks of the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan to the west of Turkey.
It is a project of common interest and a priority project under the Central and South Eastern Europe Connectivity (CESEC) initiative, facilitated and supported by the European Commission to the tune of €85 million so far.
Its initial capacity is planned at 3 billion cubic metres per year in the south-north direction, upgradable at a later stage to 5-6 billion cubic metres per year on a bi-directional basis. The project is conducted by Bulgarian Energy Holding (50%), Edison of Italy (25%) and the Public Gas Corporation of Greece DEPA (25%).
Upswing in regional cooperation in South-Eastern Europe. Meeting the same day in Sofia at the 5th CESEC ministerial meeting, Energy and Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete and the representatives of the countries concerned (Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia plus the countries of the Energy Community, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, FYROM, Kosovo, Montenegro, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine) witnessed the signing ceremony of the start of investment and works for the Greece-Bulgaria interconnection.
Those attending the meeting also took part in a symbolic ceremony for the start of construction works on the Romanian section of the Bulgaria-Romania-Hungary-Austria (BRUA) transmission system project and discussed the next steps for their enhanced regional cooperation in all energy-related matters.
In order to speed up gas market integration in Central and South-Eastern Europe and to diversify sources of gas supply in the wake of Russia’s ditching of its South Stream gas pipeline project under the Black Sea, the nine EU countries concerned launched the CESEC initiative, which is supervised by the Commission and which was later joined by the Countries of the Energy Community.
The initial goal was to build the region’s missing energy infrastructure in order to connect these countries one with the other and with the rest of Europe thus making gas supply more secure and ensuring that each country had access to at least three different sources of gas supply.
In addition to the IGB and BRUA, the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline from Greece to Italy via Albania and the Adriatic Sea, the interconnection between Bulgaria and Serbia, reinforcement of the Bulgarian gas transmission system, the LNG terminal in Krk, Croatia, and the LNG evacuation system towards Hungary are the ongoing CESEC priority gas projects.
Connection of off-shore Romanian gas to the Romanian grid, a new Greek LNG terminal and the interconnection between Croatia and Serbia are other possible projects.
In autumn 2017, the CESEC countries signed a memorandum of understanding extending regional cooperation to electricity markets, energy efficiency and renewable development (see EUROPE 11872). (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)