Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 24
By Aygun Badalova - Trend:
A final investment decision on the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB Pipeline) will be made in the first half of 2015, Athens daily Kathimerini reported referring to Depa Chief Executive Officer Spiros Paleoyannis.
"A final investment decision on the 183-kilometer IGB pipeline "is very near" and will be taken in the first half of 2015 while the project has secured necessary environmental licenses in Greece and Bulgaria," Paleoyannis said in an interview.
He said that with an initial capacity of three billion cubic meters a year, and the possibility for an upgrade to around five billion, the pipeline can serve as a northern link from Greece to Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Hungary, elsewhere in the region and even Baltic nations.
IGB is proposed to connect with the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which will transport gas within the second stage of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz field development to Europe.
In January, 2014, a Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation was signed between TAP and ICGB - the company in charge of the development, financing and construction the IGB. The memorandum aimed at establishing the technical cooperation in order to further develop strategic infrastructure in the region.
The MOUC allows for cooperation between the two companies who work together on a possible interconnection point in the vicinity of Komotini, Greece.
The construction of TAP is expected to start in 2016. Presumably, by the same year the construction of Greece-Bulgaria gas grid inter-connector will be already completed.
In addition to a connection with TAP, the link could be fed by imports to Depa's planned floating LNG storage and regasification facility near Kavala in northern Greece, according to Paleoyannis.