Gastrans, a joint venture of Serbian Srbijagas and Russian Gazprom, has invited binding bids for booking the capacity of the Serbian section of TurkStream gas pipeline extension, connecting Bulgarian and Hungarian borders.
The statement from the company said that companies which have placed non-binding bids in the market test carried out last year are now invited to submit binding bids for gas transit between 1 January 2020 and 30 September 2039. The total volume of available annual capacity is 395.2 GWh/day at the Bulgaria interconnection and 271.02 GWh/day at the interconnection with Hungary. The deadline for the submission of binding bids is 18 March, after which the bidders will be notified on the result before 29 March.
Last May, nine companies have submitted their non-binding offers at the public call for the lease of capacity of the new gas pipeline in Serbia, which will connect borders of Bulgaria and Hungary. The project is developed by Serbian company Gastrans, former South Stream Serbia, in which Russian Gazprom holds 51 % stake and state-owned Srbijagas the remaining 49 %. Serbia consumes about 2.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year and, on the basis of the bids received, additional 15 billion cubic meters would transit the country, which means that the pipeline should have a capacity of 42 million cubic meters per day. This is three times higher than current capacity of Serbia-Hungary interconnection, which is 13 mil-lion cubic meters of gas per day.
Last week, the Serbian Energy Agency (AERS) has given a final approval for the construction of Serbian section of TurkStream gas pipeline that will connect Bulgarian and Hungarian borders and the start of its construction is expected to start in April. Serbian section of the TurkStream pipeline should become operational in 2020.
