Bulgaria has extended its transit gas pipeline to Turkey

The new 20 km looping link in south-eastern Bulgaria will boost the Trans-Balkan pipeline’s capacity to 15.7 billion m³/y of gas from its current 14 billion m³/y, and will help increase security of gas supplies, officials said.

“Now we have constructed a pipeline that will allow for reversible flows, so we can get gas from Turkey, from Azerbaijan and Russia,” Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said at the official ceremony, which was also attended by Turkish Energy Minister Fatih Donmez.

Sofia has also launched a tender for an 11 km pipeline to provide a higher capacity link between the new looping section and the Turkish border. The process has been put on hold however, as one Bulgarian company is appealing the tender conditions.

At present, Russia’s Gazprom ships approximately 13 billion m³/y of gas through Ukraine and Bulgaria to Turkey. The shipments however may cease next year, when Moscow expects the first line of TurkStream to become operational. TurkStream is part of the Kremlin’s plans to bypass Ukraine, currently the main transit route for Russian gas to Europe, and strengthen its position in the European gas market.

It consists of two lines with an annual capacity of 15.7 billion m³/y each that will run under the Black Sea to Turkey. The first line, already completed, will be used for local consumption.

The second line is planned to run through Turkey to south-eastern and central Europe.

Bulgaria has said it wants to serve as an entry point to Europe, but Russia is yet to decide whether that pipeline will ship gas via Bulgaria or Greece.

Sofia hopes to reach an agreement with Moscow, Ankara and Brussels that some of the Russian gas from TurkStream can be transported through Bulgaria to Serbia, Hungary and Austria, while part of it can be traded at its planned gas hub.

Read the article online at: https://www.worldpipelines.com/project-news/03082018/bulgaria-has-extended-its-transit-gas-pipeline-to-turkey/