The Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB) has been hooked up to the Trans-Adriatic gas pipeline (TAP), which in the future will give Bulgaria access to gas from Azerbaijan for the first time, Report informs referring to IGB's operator.
The tie-in was completed with two golden welds, connecting a gas metering station at Komotini with TAP's existing infrastructure a few hundred meters north of IGB's above-ground facility.
Once IGB is up and running, the tie-in will initially provide Bulgaria with 1 billion cubic meters per year of gas, rising to 3 billion cubic meters per year at a later stage, which represents the interconnector's current capacity.
The pipeline's operator, ICGB, a joint venture between Bulgaria's BEH, Greece's DEPA and Italy's Edison, has previously said its commercial launch should take place in July 2022, allowing Bulgaria not only to tap Azeri gas but also supplies from Greek LNG terminals. This will break Russia's monopoly over the country's gas market.
The developers have proposed a second phase that would take the pipeline's capacity to 5 billion cubic meters per year.
The total length of the IGB is 182 km, of which 151 km will pass through the territory of Bulgaria, and 31 km through Greece. IGB is intended for the export to Bulgaria of natural gas produced as part of the second phase of the development of the Shah Deniz gas condensate field in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea.
In the future, the Serbia-Bulgaria pipeline will also be connected to the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, which is the European branch of the Southern Gas Corridor. This is provided through the IGB.
Earlier, Elshad Nasirov, vice-president for investment and marketing of SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state oil company, spoke about the potential for expanding the Southern Gas Corridor to provide energy sources so needed in the Western Balkans. The Western Balkans include countries such as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Kosovo.
The total length of TAP is 878 km, of which 550 km passes through the northern part of Greece, 215 km through the territory of Albania, 105 km through the Adriatic Sea and 8 km through the territory of Italy. The throughput capacity of the gas pipeline is planned to be doubled, up to 20 billion cubic meters per year.