BAKU, Azerbaijan, Feb.2. Serbia and Azerbaijan will continue discussions on gas supplies, Minister of Energy of the Republic of Serbia, Dubravka Djedovic said in an exclusive interview with Trend.
“I expect that during the visit to Baku, in addition to the topics that will be discussed at the Ministerial Meeting of the Southern Gas Corridor Advisory Council, we will continue discussions on the volumes of gas that can be supplied from Azerbaijan to Serbia once the construction of the Serbia-Bulgaria Gas Interconnector has been completed, but also on other topics that we raised during the visit of the President of Serbia to Azerbaijan at the end of last year, such as the possibility of building gas power plants,” she said.
Djedovic noted that the cooperation between Serbia and Azerbaijan is becoming increasingly important strategy-wise, primarily owing to the excellent personal relations between President Ilham Aliyev and President Aleksandar Vučić.
“A further, important demonstration of such relations is particularly the progress of energy cooperation,” the minister added.
Djedovic went on to add that in addition to holding intensive talks on cooperation in the gas sector, Serbia has also expressed interest in securing additional amounts of electricity from Azerbaijan, whereby the costs of power transmission are analysed in order to reach a solution that is cost- efficient, in addition to being important in terms of energy.
“The plans to import electricity of the Serbia's neighbouring countries, such as Hungary and Romania, also represent an additional boost to our plans to develop the transmission network and regional connectivity in the energy sector,” she said.
Serbia will get access to Azerbaijani gas via the interconnector with Bulgaria. On Feb.1 this year Bulgaria announced the start of construction of the interconnector. It is planned to commission the pipeline running from Novi Iskar, Bulgaria to Nis, Serbia, by the end of 2023. Bulgaria plans to complete the construction of the 62-km section on its territory by the end of October 2023, and the Serbian section will also be ready by autumn.
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