The Serbian, Bulgarian, and Azerbaijani Heads of State, as well as the head of the European Union mission in Belgrade, jointly “opened the gas tap,” reports Index. The interconnector, which has been put into test operation, will take Azerbaijani gas through Bulgaria to Serbia, from where it will eventually reach Hungary.
Azerbaijan, one of the EU’s most important suppliers, supplied the European Union with 8.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2021. This year, the volume is expected to exceed 12 billion cubic meters, according to the Azeri President.
Hungary will buy 100 million cubic meters of this amount,
as agreed between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Azeri President Ilham Aliyev in the summer.
The construction of the 109-kilometer new interconnector between Dimitrovgrad in Bulgaria and Nis near the border took about a year. The total length of the interconnector from Sofia to Serbia’s third most populous city is 170 kilometers. The interconnector, which has been put now into test operation, has an annual capacity of 1.8 billion cubic meters of natural gas, 60 percent of Serbia’s total annual demand.