BULGARGEZ executive director Kiril Gegov said on August 5 that his company was inviting international bids for a principal technical designer and a contractor of an environmental impact assessment of the Nabucco gas pipeline project.
The countries participating in the project - Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria - will hold a second meeting on project-financing with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European Investment Bank and the International Finance Corporation.
The EBRD has already expressed willingness to acquire equity in the joint company in which participating countries now hold equal interests.
The 4.5 billion euro project is to transport natural gas over 4000 km from the Caspian Basin to Central and Western Europe. It is a joint initiative of Bulgargaz (Bulgaria), Transgaz (Romania), Botas (Turkey), OMV (Austria) and Mol (Hungary). Construction is expected to begin in early 2008 at the latest in order to begin piping 8-10 billion cu m of gas annually from 2012.
The Nabucco project aims to make the European Union less dependent on Russian gas supplies, providing an alternative delivery route. Currently, Russia supplies 44 per cent of natural gas and 18 per cent of crude oil imported by the 25 EU member states.
The length of the gas pipeline in Bulgaria is about 400 km., with two compression stations. The construction of the pipeline and facilities within Bulgarian territory will cost 350-400 million euro.
Gegov also said that the transit of Russian natural gas through Bulgaria to Turkey, Greece and Macedonia increased by 25 per cent in January-July from a year earlier. Supplies to Turkey increased most.
Natural gas can be sent to Romania from the autumn of 2006 after it builds a gas pipeline under the Danube. Transit will start at 100 million cu m of gas per year and will gradually reach 500 million cu m.
Romania’s Transgaz, a unit of German oil and gas firm Wintershall, and Bulgargaz have agreed to study options for building a gas pipeline linking the Bulgarian city of Rousse and Romania’s Giurgiu, on the opposite banks of the Danube.
“At a meeting two weeks ago, Transgaz and Bulgargaz agreed to study the options for carrying gas from Bulgaria to Romania through a pipeline under the Danube,” Gegov said.
Swiss-based gas firm Wintershall Erdgas Handelshaus Zug AG is a fully-owned subsidiary of German group BASF’s oil and gas unit Wintershall. It already supplies Russian natural gas to Bulgaria under a joint venture with Russian group Gazprom.
“If they start building at the end of September, the pipe should be ready for next year’s winter season,” Gegov said.
The cost of the project is unclear. The project might be extended with the construction of a 60-km pipeline to carry natural gas from Giurgiu to the southern Romanian towns of Alexandria, Oltenita and Zimnicea.
Wintershall has also announced that it will buy 51 per cent of the Bulgarian gas trader Dexia Bulgaria.
Dexia, which has been fully-owned by the Bulgarian chemical fertiliser producer Agropolychim, a unit of the US Acid & Fertilisers LLC, is the only licensed natural gas trader other than state monopoly Bulgargaz.
It has bought gas drawn from deposits located off Bulgaria’s northern Black Sea coast and sold it to nearby Agropolychim plant over the last year. It controls only 2.4 per cent of the market.