Nabucco Moves Forward in Bulgaria
The Bulgarian section of the Nabucco pipeline has formally entered into the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Approval phase, the Nabucco National Company has announced.
The documentation relating to the EIA procedure was submitted to the Ministry of Environment in the capital, Sofia, on October 31, Nabucco said in a statement.
Earlier this year, Nabucco announced the completion of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) permitting process for the Hungarian section of the route, where the last of four permits was granted in June. The Bulgarian section is 422 kilometres long.
Reinhard Mitschek, managing director of the Nabucco Gas Pipeline GmbH, said: “Nabucco is far advanced in Bulgaria, and we congratulate the team there on this next step in the development of the project.”
The managing director of the Nabucco National Company in Bulgaria, Marii Kossev, added: “We look forward to continuing our excellent cooperation with the authorities: to incorporating their feedback and working with the public and other stakeholders in the EIA process. Apart from promoting diversification of energy supply and freedom of choice for the Bulgarian consumer, Nabucco will create hundreds of jobs in Bulgaria, €1 billion of investment, taxes and create new business opportunities.”
The submission of the EIA documentation is the start of the legal process surrounding environmental assessment in Bulgaria. After a review by the competent authority, Nabucco (represented in Bulgaria by its national company), will incorporate feedback after consultations. The next step will be to hold public consultations along the route, after which the application will return to the authorities for a final decision.
Connecting gas from the Caspian Region and the Middle East to over 500 million potential customers in Europe, Nabucco is the flagship project in the Southern Corridor. The Nabucco consortium said in the statement that it continues to work closely with the Shah Deniz II consortium and with the Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline (TANAP).