Serbia completes its Turkish Stream segment

Serbia completed the pipelay on its segment of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, chief executive of Srbijagas Company Dusan Bajatovic said.

"Yes, we can state with pleasure that Serbia completed its portion of work, when the pipelay is meant, on the segment of the Bulgarian Border — Hungarian Border interconnector," he said on the air with the RTS TV Channel

"The work has been completed," TASS cited the top manager as saying.

Gas deliveries over the Serbian segment of the Turkish Stream pipeline will start before the end of April 2020. Input capacity is expected to be about 13.88 bln cubic meters of gas, while output capacity will be about 10 bln cubic meters.

A senior analyst of 'Uralsib', Alexei Kokin, speaking to Vestnik Kavkaza, noted that the project has every chance of a successful completion. "As far as I understand, the opening of the first section will take place in a few weeks. I don’t know for sure when the section that goes to Bulgaria and Italy will be opened, but at least the two lines that go to Turkey will be opened in January," the expert noted.

Speaking about the Hungarian segment of the gas pipeline, Kokin noted that Hungary has always expressed interest in the implementation of the Turkish Stream.

“Hungary has always been quite interested in this pipeline. I heard about some difficulties only with Bulgaria, but, as I understand it, they were resolved, Bulgaria expressed its readiness to participate in the project,” the analyst continued.

At the same time, he said that he did not see a threat of disruption of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline. “From a technical point of view, the construction of the onshore part of the gas pipeline is much simpler than the offshore. In addition, Gazprom has much more experience here. Therefore, it is difficult to say that sanctions against some contractors can stop the project. If it is necessary, the contractors can be replaced. Now the question is the pace of work in Bulgaria, but nothing more," Alexei Kokin concluded.