Serbia To Increase Purchases Of Russian Natural Gas - President

Serbia will increase gas purchases from Russia and will further expand the Banatski Dvor underground gas storage facility with the help of Russia's Gazprom, President Alexander Vucic said monday

BELGRADE (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd October, 2019) Serbia will increase gas purchases from Russia and will further expand the Banatski Dvor underground gas storage facility with the help of Russia's Gazprom, President Alexander Vucic said monday.

In 2018, Gazprom exported to Serbia 2.15 billion cubic meters of gas, a 1.2 per cent increase from 2017 (2.12 billion cubic meters).

A pipeline is currently under construction on the territory of Serbia from the border with Bulgaria to Hungary. Natural gas from the Turkish Stream pipeline is expected to flow through this leg with a length of 402 kilometers and with a throughput of 12.87 billion cubic meters per year.

Vucic told Sputnik in an interview that Serbia favors Russian gas as its cheaper than that of other suppliers and has high percentage of methane in its composition.

In addition, Russian and Serbian gas companies Gazprom and Srbijagas signed in January a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the project for the Banatski Dvor gas storage capacity expansion by 300 million cubic meters to a total of 750 mil-lion cubic meters.

"We must expand it because the volume of 450 million cubic meters is not enough for us. There is a project for expanding by 750 million cubic meters, but we must think ahead of a sharp rise in the Serbian industry and increase this to 2 or 3 billion cubic meters," Vucic stressed.