Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria signed a joint declaration to create a gas Interconnector designed to link Central with Southeastern Europe, said the message posted on Euractiv portal.
“The parties to this document hereby declare their support for the implementation of interconnection and substantial bidirectional capacity of existing infrastructure for natural gas supply on the territory of the Republic of Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and the Slovak Republic and for joint efforts to seek new sources and routes of diversification,” said the document.
“The present document records political intent only. No provision of this Declaration shаll be interpreted and implemented as creating legal rights or commitments for the states of the parties,” the document reads.
The message said that Eastring gas pipeline project is the basis for this.
“Eastring is a proposed pipeline, a version of which is 832 kilometres long, and runs across Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, while another version is 1274 kilometres long, and reaches Bulgaria,” said the message. “One of its advantages is that Eastring uses the existing infrastructure of Eustream on Slovak territory, which was completely renovated after the 2009 gas crisis.”
“It is designed to transport gas in both directions, with a capacity of 20 billion cubic metres a year (bcm/y) at the first stage and 40 bcm/y at the final stage. Potential gas sources for forward flows are Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Iraq, Cyprus and Russia, while for the reverse flow, it is gas from Western European hubs,” said the message.
