BELGRADE, November 11 (Itar-Tass) - The construction of the South Stream gas pipeline in Serbia will start on November 24, Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic said. “By building the South Stream gas pipeline Serbia remains committed to implementing the energy agreement it signed with the Russian Federation. It is in the interests of Belgrade and Moscow to implement this agreement as soon as possible. For Serbia it is also important because it will become a large regional energy centre,” the prime minister said on Monday, November 11, after talks with Russia’s Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller. At their meeting in Belgrade, the parties discussed the possibility of building an extension from the pipeline to Macedonia, Republika Srpska (within Bosnia-Herzegovina), Kosovo and Metohija. “This would ensure stable gas supply to the whole region,” Dacic said. The last remaining technical details concerning the start of construction will be approved within the next several days. Dacic believes it important to start the construction as soon as possible because “this is a large project worth slightly less than two billion euro.” South Stream, which will be jointly built by Gazprom and ENI, will eventually take 30 billion cubic metres of Russian natural gas a year to southern Europe. Analysts have said that the project will cost around 10 billion euro, or 15.82 billion U.S. dollars. South Stream is scheduled to become operational in 2013. The overall capacity of the marine section of the pipeline will be 63 billion cubic metres a year. Its cost is about 8.6 billion euro. Supported by German, French and Italian investors and running across ten countries, the pipeline will supply 63 billion cubic metres of gas a year by 2020, meeting about 10 percent of Europes gas needs. According to experts, Europe’s gas demand will grow by 25 percent by 2030, with up to 80 percent of natural gas to be imported to meet these needs, which makes projects like South Stream strategically important.
Posted on: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 21:10:23 +0000
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