Bulgaria Loses Out: Gazprom to Demolish Remains of South Stream Pipeline

Gazprom announced its intention to liquidate the gas transmission facilities built for the South Stream gas pipeline, meaning the gas measuring station "Morshanskaya" and 506 kilometers of the linear part of the "Eastern Route" (Pochinki-Anapa), belonging to the Southern Corridor, will be removed.

“The unfinished construction (NCS) on sections of the linear part of the Eastern Corridor wil be liquidated with a view to further implementation of usable material and technical resources (MTRs). Preservation of NCS facilities will take place before making a decision on the implementation of these facilities in full,” says Gazprom.

The company intended to build gas pipeline South Stream along the Black Sea basin from Russia to Bulgaria. Its capacity was to be 63 billion cubic meters of gas per year. However, after the intervention of the European Parliament, Bulgaria decided to abandon its agreements with Russia. Thus, at the end of 2015, the project was frozen, and in 2017, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that it was not going to reanimate the unfinished gas pipeline.

In May 2017, Russia began work on another project - the sea part of Turkish Stream. The gas pipeline will also run along the bottom of the Black Sea, but towards Turkey. In future, it will be possible to extend one of the threads of the Turkish Stream to the countries of the European Union.

Both strings of the gas pipeline will have a total capacity of 31.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year. Construction work is expected to be completed in 2019.

By Dimitri Dolaberidze