OMV Interested in Using Bulgarian Pipes to Transport Romanian Gas

Austrian OMV has asked Bulgarian state-owned gas transmission operator Bulgartransgaz about opportunities to transport natural gas from Romania via Bulgarian gas pipelines, according to Georgi Gegov, CEO of Bulgartransgaz.

Gegov, as cited by Pressa daily, said at an energy conference on Tuesday that the inquiry had been made by Reinhard Mitschek, Senior Vice President for gas logistics at OMV.

The company is drilling for oil and gas at Romania's Neptun Block, which is near the Bulgarian Han Asparuh exploration block.
Mitschek asked about the opportunity to engage all the spare capacity of the Bulgarian pipes as of 2016.

Bulgartransgaz replied that Bulgaria's transit system had been almost exclusively reserved by Gazprom until 2030.

The company informed that the only opportunity was to use the 5 billion cubic meters of spare capacity of the internal gas network.

Bulgartransgaz plans to build a new long-distance gas pipeline from Varna to Oryahovo.

The pipeline is to be around 500km long and to have a capacity of up to 45 billion cubic meters of gas a year.

The pipeline is a key element of the big project for establishing a gas hub in Bulgaria.

The new pipeline will carry gas from three sources - from Romania, from the Bulgarian Black Sea gas deposits, and, possibly, from the South Stream gas pipeline, in the case of a restart of the project.

The idea for a gas hub on Bulgarian territory has been included in the gas network development plan of the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas (ENTSOG), according to Energy Minister Temenuzhka Petkova.