Ambassador: Serbia may finish TurkStream extension in 2020

BELGRADE, Oct 27 (PRIME) -- Serbia may finish construction of its extension of the TurkStream natural gas pipeline, which would run from Bulgaria to Hungary, until the end of 2020, Russian ambassador to Serbia Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko said in an interview to Serbian news agency Tanjug published on Tuesday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is to visit Serbia on Wednesday and to meet with President Aleksandar Vucic.

“In the sphere of energy, the project of a pipeline that is key for Serbia and for the majority of Europe is developing. It may be finished until the end of this year, there are only gas metering stations and a compressor station left to be built,” Botsan-Kharchenko said.

Besides the pipeline, Lavrov and Vucic will discuss gas supplies, expansion of the Banatsky Dvor underground gas storage, cooperation with Russian state nuclear power corporation Rosatom, and cooperation in the healthcare sphere, he said.

The TurkStream pipeline was designed to consist of two branches with a length of over 900 kilometers and a capacity of 15.75 billion cubic meters each. One of them, finished in May 2018, is to carry Russian gas to Turkey, while the other is to transit gas to the European countries through Turkey. Bulgartransgaz plans to build an extension of TurkStream to Europe by the end of 2020.

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