Ukrainian company “Burisma”, which director Hunter Biden has been recently appointed, is one of the companies that purchased tender documents for participation in the selection of companies which will carry out gasification of Skopje. “Burisma” is one of the largest private companies in Ukraine in the business of oil and gas, and even though it is gas distributor, it conduct the exploitation of this energy source in three key basins of the country, in the valleys of the rivers Dnieper, Carpathian and Crimean Basin, which is industrialized region in Ukraine. “Burisma’s” fields of exploitation are close to the main pipeline of Ukraine and are fully connected to it.
Extended the deadline for applications
So far for this Macedonian strategic project showed an interest four companies from Ukraine, Turkey, Italy and one from Macedonia, who probably planned to go along with other foreign partner, which meets the requirements for participation in the public call. The basic terms of the public calls is that the company has at least six years of experience in Operation of natural gas distribution systems in urban areas, at least 40 thousand users and a total annual income of not less than 40 million euros.
A Turkish company which is interested to conduct gasification of the Macedonian capital is “Akso Energie”, which is the second largest company in the gas sector in Turkey, and the largest private distributor of natural gas, which is composed of 20 gas distribution and over half a million users. It is both a distributor and the largest independent power producer in Turkey. Among other things, it is one of the owners of wind power plants in Turkey, with a total installed capacity of 131 MW. Recently a Italian company purchased tender documents as well, which is one of three companies that operates in Bulgaria, where the gasification is regionally divided.
The Government has decided to extend the deadline for declaration of interest in this project for one more month and it terminates on June 26th . In order to attract more interested companies soon will be organized project website with a link to the conference live connection, for which will be published in the invitation to participate, and directly calls will be send to a number of companies that are interested in this business. At the presentation of the company potential bidders will be able to get specific answers about the plan gasification Skopje.
After the application deadline, with all interested companies will be preformed a dialogue procedure, in which the first phase will be to talk about what each company offers, and then some of them will continue negotiations until the final selection, when will be made agreement Public-private partnership with the state. It is expected that to happen in September.
A network of 175 kilometers
A future partner will have a task to build primary and secondary natural gas distribution network, to invest in setting up connections to all end users or public institutions, residential commercial customers, including equipment for measurement and control (MPC), to distribute natural gas to manage the distribution system, take care of the maintenance and development of distribution systems and to invest in adaptation, and the purchase of equipment for the production of thermal energy in existing buildings.
The company, which will be elected, in the first five years should build 175 km of network and by 51% in urban municipalities and 20% in the suburban. The estimates are that in 2016 the first customers will receive natural gas. Gasification of Skopje region annually will replace the annual production of electricity from “Oslomej”.