Bulgaria signs agreement on Nabucco construction

The government of Bulgaria signed an agreement on constructing the Bulgarian section of the Nabucco gas pipeline with its operator, RIA Novosti reports, citing the US newspaper Upstream.
The operator of the project is a consortium consisting of Austrian OMV, Hungarian MOL, Romanian Transgaz, Turkish Botas and German RWE.

The project is a competitor of the ‘South Stream’ gas pipeline project, an agreement on which was signed between Russia and Bulgaria on July 16th.

According to Upstream, both projects will be realized in Bulgaria.

The negotiations between Russia and Bulgaria on signing the ‘road map’ development for the technical-economic basis of the construction project of the Bulgarian section of ‘South Stream’ started last Friday. Besides the delegations of the two countries, headed by the ministers of energy, there are also the deputy head of Gazprom, Alexander Medvedev, and the head of Bulgarian Bulgargaz, Dimitar Gogov, the head of the board of directors of Bulgartransgaz, Georgiy Gegov, and the executive director of Bulgarian energy holding, Maya Christofa, participating in the negotiations.

The construction of the ‘South Stream’ pipeline through the Black Sea to Southern and Central Europe is aimed at diversifying the routes of export of Russian natural gas. The sea section of the pipeline is 900 km long and will traverse the bed of the Black Sea from the compression station ‘Russkaya’ on the Russian coast to Bulgaria.

The productivity of the sea section of ‘South Stream’ will be 63 billion cubic m annually. The land sections will involve agreements with Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Greece, Slovenia, Croatia and Austria.

The technical-economic basis of the construction is planned for February 2011. The pipeline will be launched in December 2015.

The Nabucco project involves gas transport from the Caspian region to Europe, avoiding Russia, through Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Austria. It will transport 31 billion cubic m of gas annually, which will cover only 5% of demand in the EU in 2020.

The known and estimated gas reserves, including the ones opened in the Caspian shelf in Kazakhstan, are estimated at 3.3 trillion cubic m, with possible reserves estimated at 6-8 trillion cubic m. Gas extraction in 2010 in Kazakhstan is forecast to increase 1.5 times, to reach 45 billion cubic m.