Construction of South Stream bothers several international circles, but some circles in Serbia as well, Director of Srbijagas, Dusan Bajatovic, claims.
Bajatovic stated that South Stream is not in accordance with the will of some international circles, but with some people in Serbia either. Those people are representatives of some lobby groups which are not happy because of this.
He stressed that South Stream is needed in Serbia and that this is one big project where Serbia is called to participate in, emphasizing that country will provide approach to different energy sources and long-term energy stability.
“There are different speculations and we can see now that everyone who was saying that there will be nothing from South Stream was not right”, Bajatovic said when he was commenting statements of certain medias that Gasprom’s Chief, Aleksey Miller said when he was commenting individuals who are trying to obstruct South Stream.
He emphasized that it is clear that there are some disagreements between him and Energy Minister, Zorana Mihajlovic, but as he said “this doesn’t have any personal side and anything of it won’t refer to South Stream because all decisions about this project are not made by Ministry of Energy, but the whole Government.
“I have never seen any big problems in realization of all that Srbijagas asked from Government”, Bajatovic underlined and added that all activities and full responsibility for business related to South Stream is the responsibility of Srbijagas, which will acquire all its obligations in the future.
“Deadlines for South Stream construction and all activities on this project are completely harmonized and they are going as Srbijagas and Gasprom planned”, Bajatovic stressed and added there will be not an hour of being late with reference to deadlines given by two companies.
Works are postponed from technical reasons
Bajatovic emphasized that ground stone for Serbian part of South Stream was intended to be set in December last year but it was given up because of technical reasons.
“Srbijagas will deliver ideological project for South Stream tomorrow, the first and main project will be finished by 30 June and Serbian Government completely followed South Stream financing with guaranties, complete ecology, mine clearance, geological and geodetic research were done”, Bajatovic said and added that requests for work performers will be announced in September and tender announcement for supply of pipes and compressor station is being prepared.
We should be satisfied with work dynamics, there is no delaying, the beginning of these big works is planned for the end of this year and finish is planned for the end of 2015 while gas is expected to begin to flow in 2016.
The low for South Stream is adopted in order to make works on this project easier and this is absolutely the project of national interest, despite that it is called the project of public interest in legal terms- Bajatovic concluded.
Source;Serbia Energy/Agencies/Srbijagas
