BAKU, Azerbaijan, Aug.29. Bulgaria imported 74.8 million cubic meters of gas from Azerbaijan in June 2023, as compared to 77.2 million cubic meters in May, Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, told Trend.
As such, the country reduced natural gas imports from Azerbaijan by 3.1 percent month-on-month.
Overall, Azerbaijan exported 456.2 million cubic meters to Bulgaria in the first six months of this year.
The value of exports stood at 172.2 million euros from January through June 2023. It was 26.6 million euros in June, compared to 27.1 million euros in May, showing a 1.8 percent decrease.
Bulgaria started importing gas from Azerbaijan via the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB) which was put into operation on October 1, 2022. The contracted volume of gas supplies via this interconnector is 1 billion cubic meters per year. The total capacity of IGB is 3 billion cubic meters, expandable to 5 billion cubic meters per year.
Azerbaijan exports gas to Europe via the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, the final leg of the Southern Gas Corridor. The initial capacity of TAP is 10 billion cubic meters expandable to 20 billion cubic meters per year.
Meanwhile, data from the energy ministry for the same period in 2023 indicates that Azerbaijan produced 24.1 billion cubic meters of natural gas. Of this, 6.5 billion cubic meters were extracted from the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) field, and 13.2 billion cubic meters came from the Shah Deniz field. The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) contributed 4.4 billion cubic meters to the overall gas production during this period. Gas transportation also increased by 0.7 billion cubic meters, signaling a 3 percent rise compared to the previous year.
Gas sales during this period amounted to 12 billion cubic meters, showing a 7.5 percent growth compared to the corresponding period in the previous year. Of this total, approximately 5 billion cubic meters of gas were exported to Turkey, 5.7 billion cubic meters to Europe, and 1.3 billion cubic meters to Georgia. It's worth noting that more than 2.8 billion cubic meters of gas were exported to Turkey through the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) during this time.
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