Changes in the spatial plan of the South Stream pipeline through Serbia should be adopted in September and according the plan the construction should begin by the end of year. The land expropriation for the pipeline construction should begin soon, said the technical director of the South Stream Serbia Pavel Persicki in the presentation of the spatial plan changes of the South Stream pipeline by which are included also plans for the arms to the Republika Srpska and Croatia.
“The preliminary project was completed and send to the expertise, a study on the environmental impacts was done all technical requirements were obtained in order to get a building permit and start work by the end of the year”, said Persicki.
The researches and interviews with the land owners started, he said and pointed out that the “land expropriation will start very soon on the parcels where it will be firstly constructed”.
Persicki said that market conditions and the land price already established in the municipalities would be applied on the expropriation, adding that everything would be done in cooperation with the independent assessors, but did not want to say the average purchase price.
He said that it would be the hardest to build the first section of the South Stream gas pipeline in Serbia long about 150 kilometers from the entrance of Bulgaria near Zajecar, because it was the hilly and mountainous area , but that was not a problem because the pipelines were constructed in the more complicated field.
“According to characteristics and scopes, the South Stream pipeline is one of the most important projects in Serbia. It is envisaged that its use begin in 2016. “, said Persicki.
Asked whether did start the making of spatial plan changes by which would be envisaged the construction of so-called southern arm of the South Stream pipeline to Macedonia, Persicki said that current changes of the plan did not contain them.
Deputy Director of the Republic Agency for Spatial Planning, Djordje Milic, said that start-up activities related to the spatial plan of the separated South Stream gas pipeline, which should enable gas supply for Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo, were ongoing.
“The steps and decision preparation (of the spatial plan) that the Serbian government should make are analyzed. The restriction exist on that road section because it is the mountainous area and it is necessary to find the optimal locations”, said Milic.
On the conference was told that the South Stream pipeline, with arms to Croatia and Repulika Srpska would pass through the territory of 33 towns and municipalities in Serbia, the main section was long 422.4 kilometers, branch to Croatia 50 kilometers, and to Republika Srpska 107 kilometers.
Team Leader at the Institute for Architecture and Urbanism of Serbia, Zoran Mirjanic said that the revised regional plan for the South Stream pipeline construction in Serbia covered 323 square kilometers and about 1,100 positions of pipeline crossing with the local infrastructure.
“The pipeline route is set largely to avoid the construction area and mostly passes over farmland and partly through the forest”, he said.
Mirjanic said that about 80 hectares or 0.2 percent of the land covered by the plan are provided for the permanent expropriation, while most of the farmland could be used with the restriction for culture planting whose root went up to a meter of deep.
He said that buildings demolition was planned on some parcels, for example, there were 22 in the municipality of Boljevac and 17 in Zajecar.
Mirjanić said that certain protective zones agreeable with the standards of people and property protection were defined by the spatial plan and that South Stream would be connected with the Serbian gas network near Paracin and Gospodjinci.
The Public access to the spatial plan changes for the South Stream pipeline in Serbia will be available until 6th September. According to earlier information, the value of road section building in Serbia will be about 1.85 billion EUR.
The South Stream pipeline will bring Russian gas through the pipeline under the Black Sea and then overland through Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Slovenia and Italy to consumers in Southeast Europe and the EU.
The construction of that pipeline, which should cost 16 billion EUR, started in December 2012. in Russia, and the pipeline should be operational at the end of 2015.
The project carrier is the Russian state company Gazprom, and part of the project in Serbia will realized company South Stream Serbia in which Gazprom has 51 percent and Srbijagas 49 percent of the capital.
Source; Serbia Energy/Serbian gov
