Page 7 - EurOil Week 21 2021

EurOil PIPELINES & TRANSPORT EurOil

EIB funds Bulgarian-

Serbian gas pipeline

SERBIA THE European Investment Bank (EIB) has Serbia already shares a pipeline connection
pledged a €25mn ($30.5mn) loan for the devel- with Bulgaria, but this is used to pump Russian
It will be one of the opment of a gas pipeline linking Bulgaria with gas arriving in Southeast Europe via the Turk-
bank’s final investments Serbia. Stream pipeline.
in natural gas. Officials from the bank and the Bulgarian Serbia’s government recently launched a pub-
and Serbian governments noted in a signing cer- lic call to select companies to build the pipeline,
emony that the 171-km Nis-Dimitrovgrad pipe- which will be able to bring up to 1.8bn cubic
line would enable Serbia to access gas supplies metres of gas per year into the country. Author-
from Greek LNG terminals as well as shipments ities are also preparing to select a contractor on
from Azerbaijan that are pumped through the the Bulgarian side.
Southern Gas Corridor (SGC). It is listed as a
project of common interest, which earlier ena- Croatian LNG
bled it to access a €49.5mn grant. It has been suggested that Serbia might even-
The EIB is supporting construction of the tually be able to receive gas arriving at the Krk
pipeline’s Serbian section, which will cost LNG terminal in Croatia, which came on stream
€85.5mn in total. A further €48mn will be in January.
required to build it in Bulgaria. The investment The facility’s operator, Croatia LNG,
will be one of the EIB’s last in gas infrastructure, announced the undertaking of the first small-
as it has vowed to stop financing oil, gas and coal scale LNG reloading operation in the Mediterra-
projects after the end of this year, while expand- nean on May 12. An LNG cargo was loaded from
ing its support for renewables. the terminal’s floating storage and regasification
Serbia depends on coal for more than half of unit (FSRU) to the 7,000-cubic metre Avenir
its total energy supply, the International Energy Accolade vessel, the operator said.
Agency (IEA) estimates, while it uses gas for just The Krk facility can import up to 2.6 bcm per
15%. The country is eager to expand the share of year of regasified supply, with most of its capacity
gas to reduce emissions and lower costs. But first having been booked by Qatar. It can also store up
it must diversify its sources of supply to minimise to 140,200 cubic metres of LNG. Croatia LNG is
any risk to its energy security. The country relies a joint venture between Croatian state compa-
heavily on imports of Russian gas. nies Hrvatska Elektroprivreda and Plinarco. ™

Week 21 27•May•2021 www. NEWSBASE .com P7