Bulgaria to establish company to build Nabucco pipe section

Bulgaria will set up a project company to build the first section of the Nabucco gas pipeline, consisting of a pipe that will connect Turkey's national gas grid with Bulgaria's, Bloomberg reported with the reference to the executive director of Bulgarian Energy Holding Mikhail Andonov.

According to Andonov, the planned 225-kilometer pipe will link Marmara in Turkey with Lozenets in Bulgaria.

He said the estimated cost of this pipeline section is 300 million euros ($396 million), of which the EU pledged to pay 200 million euros.

"The plan is still being negotiated with Turkey", Andonov said.

In June, 2012 the consortium of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas field development chose Nabucco West as the single pipeline option for the potential export of Shah Deniz Stage 2 gas to Central Europe.

Nabucco West is a short-cut version of Nabucco project, which envisages construction of the pipeline from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to Austria. The project's current shareholders are Bulgarian Energy Holding, Romanian Transgaz, Turkish Botas, Austrian OMV, German RWE and Hungary's FGSZ, and each of them holds 16.67-percent share.

On Thursday Nabucco gas pipeline project's shareholders, Nabucco Gas Pipeline International Gmbh (NIC) and the partners on Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas condensate field (SOCAR, BP, Statoil and Total) have agreed on Equity Option and Funding Agreement and Cooperation Agreement.

Development of Equity Option and Funding Agreement and the Cooperation Agreement is nearing completion and will be shortly executed between the relevant parties in Vienna.


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