Greece-Bulgaria gas link hooked up to TAP
The Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB) has been hooked up to the Trans-Adriatic gas pipeline (TAP), which in the future will give Bulgaria access to gas from Azerbaijan for the first time, IGB's operator reported on March 25.
The tie-in was completed with two golden welds, connecting a gas metering station at Komotini with TAP's existing infrastructure a few hundred metres north of IGB's above-ground facility. Once IGB is up and running, the tie-in will initially provide Bulgaria with 1bn m3/year of gas, rising to 3bn m3/yr at a later stage, which represents the interconnector's current capacity.
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The pipeline's operator, ICGB, a joint venture between Bulgaria's BEH, Greece's DEPA and Italy's Edison, has previously said its commercial launch should take place in July 2022, allowing Bulgaria not only to tap Azeri gas but also supplies from Greek LNG terminals. This will break Russia's monopoly over the country's gas market.
The developers have proposed a second phase that would take the pipeline's capacity to 5bn m3/yr.