ATHENS: The Greece, Bulgaria and Romania agreed on the construction of a gas interconnection grid, which is scheduled to begin on March 2016 and completed by the end of 2018.
According to Bulgarian Energy Minister Temenuzhka Petkova, the three Ministers’ talks were focused on the prospective construction of the so-called “Vertical Gas Corridor,” linking gas grids of the three European Union member-states. The meeting was held in Sofia and Petkova hosted her Greek counterpart Panagiotis Lafazanis and Romanian Energy State Secretary Mihai Albulescu, as well as management officials of the Greek, Romanian, and Bulgarian entities taking part in the project.
The idea for the ambitious project was first tabled in December 2014, following the demise of Russian Gazprom’s South Stream gas pipeline. It is estimated that the new gas infrastructure could carry between 3-5 billion cubic meters of gas annually from Azerbaijan and Greece’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals.