Giurgiu–Ruse pipeline

Bulgaria launched a project to almost double its gas storage with a €152 million deal between grid operator Bulgartransgaz and a Bulgarian-led consortium signed on Friday.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin will meet in Istanbul on Jan. 8 to attend the inauguration ceremony of the TurkStream natural gas pipeline.

The pipeline will transmit Russian natural gas to Turkey and Europe under the Black Sea.

From the beginning of next year, Bulgaria will be able to import up to a billion and a half cubic meters of natural gas from Romania. This was reported during the energy conference in Sofia dedicated to alternative sources of blue fuel.

By decision of the Co-ordination Committee to the Connecting Europe Facility, 27,184 million Euros are granted for the project "Rehabilitation, Modernization and Expansion of the Bulgarian Transmission System - Phase 2" of Bulgartransgaz EAD, the company announced.

Bulgaria successfully completed a third market test to expand the country's gas transit network from Turkey to Serbia for the TurkStream natural gas pipeline, Bulgartransgaz said on Friday.

The future gas hub near Varna, for which just a feasibility study will say whether it is economically justified, has already been declared an object of national importance.

Bulgaria and Romania will construct a back-up natural gas pipeline under the Danube river. This was announced by the transmission system operator in Bulgaria - Bulgartransgaz on Tueday.

In the beginning of April, Bulgartransgaz and its Romanian counterpart Transgaz signed a contract for the construction of the main gas pipeline of the Danube river undercrossing.

The Austrian company Habau is to complete the long-anticipated first gas interconnector between Romania and Bulgaria by August 2016 after it signed a contract with the gas operators of the two countries - Transgaz and Bulgartransgaz in Sofia on Wednesday.

Bulgartransgaz and Transgaz, the gas transmission operators of Bulgaria and Romania, have signed a contract with Austria's Habau PPS Pipeline Systems SRL for the construction of the last section of a gas gas link between the two southeast European countries.

A contractor is expected to be selected in early December for the construction of a gas pipeline interconnection with Romania under the Danube river bed, Bulgaria's Energy Minister Temenuzhka Petkova said on Friday.