SOCAR to ink memo with Romgaz

State Oil and Gas Company Romgaz will sign a memorandum with the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), Report informs referring to the Romanian media.

This step is being taken in order to gain independence from gas coming from Russia.

The signing will take place on October 19 after Prime Minister Nicolae Ionel Ciuca’s meeting with Economy Minister Mikayil Jabbarov and Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov.

Romania’s largest natural gas producer has begun preliminary steps to diversify gas supply sources. In this regard, negotiations were held with Azerbaijan, which will supply gas to Romania.

It is assumed that the Romania-Bulgaria interconnector, as well as the BRUA project, will ensure the integration of natural gas sources from the Caspian and Mediterranean seas, the Middle East or Central Asia with the markets of Central and Western Europe.

BRUA will allow Hungary to transport 4.4 billion cubic meters of gas per year, Bulgaria - 1.5 billion cubic meters.

The total cost of building the BRUA gas pipeline with a length of 1,318 km in Romania amounted to 480 million euros. The EU allocated 179 million euros for the construction of the gas pipeline, the European Investment Bank - 50 million euros. Transgaz spent 149 million euros on the project.

It was previously assumed that natural gas from Azerbaijan would be delivered to Romania via the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB) in autumn 2022.

The Greece-Bulgaria gas pipeline was put into commercial operation on October 1, 2022. The IGB is connected to the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) in Greece, which will allow delivering Azerbaijani gas from the Shah Deniz field to Bulgaria.

The construction of the TAP gas pipeline was completed in October 2020. The total length of TAP is 878 km, of which 550 km pass through the northern part of Greece, 215 km through the territory of Albania, 105 km - along the bottom of the Adriatic Sea and 8 km - through the territory of Italy. Azerbaijani gas supplies to consumers in Italy, Greece and Bulgaria through TAP began on December 31, 2020.

The TAP AG consortium is considering three scenarios for increasing the pipeline capacity: limited - up to 14.4 billion cubic meters, partial - up to 17.1 billion cubic meters and full - up to 20 billion cubic meters per year.