Serbian Minister of Energy and Mining Aleksandar Antic said that the works on the expansion of underground gas storage in Banatski Dvor, which should increase its capacity to 750 million cubic meters of gas, should start in June.
Minister Antic said that the Government expects that Russian Gazprom, which holds 51 % stake in the storage, will present the technical solution for the expansion by 31 May, which would allow for concrete activities on the site to start in June. He said that the capacity of the storage will be increased to 600,000 cubic meters by the end of 2019, with a withdrawal capacity of up to 10 million cubic meters of gas per day.
In January, Russian and Serbian gas companies Gazprom and Srbijagas have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the project for the capacity expansion of Banatski Dvor underground gas storage by 300 million cubic meters to a total of 750 million cubic meters with the maximum daily withdrawal capacity of up to 10 million cubic meters. Gazprom said in a statement that this MoU sets the main parameters of the planned ex-pansion and enshrines the agreement between the two companies on the joint implementation of the project. It also said that during 2018, natural gas deliveries to Serbia rose by 1.2 % compared to the previous year to a total of 2.15 billion cubic meters.
Last week, the construction of 403 kilometers long Serbian section of TurkStream gas pipeline extension, connecting Bulgarian and Hungarian borders, has officially started and is expected to be completed in December. With an envisaged capacity of almost 14 billion cubic meters of gas per year, Serbian section should be put into operation as early as 2020, and reach its full capacity during 2022. The operator of the pipeline in Serbia is local company Gastrans, a joint venture between Russian Gazprom and state-owned gas company Srbijagas.
