Bulgaria is expecting to receive Azerbaijani gas through the Greece-Bulgaria Interconnector (IGB) in September 2022, Bulgarian Prime Minister Kirill Petkov said during his visit to Greece.
Report informs citing Interfax that he recalled that IGB will be put into operation at the end of June and Azerbaijani gas will flow through the connector from September. For Bulgaria, he said, this will mean lower prices and greater energy independence. He cited the impossibility of transporting Azerbaijani gas through the IGB as a reason for an increase in gas prices last winter.
At the end of March 2022, the IGB operator announced that the interconnector was already connected to the Trans-Adriatic Gas Pipeline (TAP), which in the future will give Bulgaria access to gas from Azerbaijan for the first time. The launch of IGB is scheduled for July 2022, which will allow Bulgaria to directly receive Azerbaijani gas. Through the gas pipeline, Bulgaria will receive 1 billion cubic meters of gas per year with a further increase to a design capacity of 3 billion cubic meters per year.
Azerbaijani gas supplies to Europe (Italy, Greece, and Bulgaria) began on December 31, 2020, via the TAP gas pipeline. However, due to the lack of an interconnector, the volume of Azerbaijani gas supplies to Bulgaria was four times less than planned.
Currently, Azerbaijani gas is supplied to Bulgaria through the existing line with a capacity of 3.68 billion cubic meters per year at the border point Kula-Sidirokastro with Greece. This severely limits the possibility of importing Azerbaijani gas to Bulgaria and allows only 250-300 million cubic meters per year to be supplied.