Bloomberg: South Stream Flop Means EBRD to Help Wean Balkans off Russia Gas

The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development is trying to help central and eastern Europe diversify away from Russian gas after President Vladimir Putin abandoned a $45 billion South Stream pipeline to the Balkans.

The EBRD will focus on reviving the construction of a gas pipeline between Serbia and Bulgaria, which the two countries had put on the back burner until the South Stream project was scrapped two weeks ago, Suma Chakrabarti, the London-based lender’s president, said in an interview in Bloomberg’s Prague office.

“If South Stream isn’t going to happen, the whole merit order of the projects below it will now change,” Chakrabarti said yesterday. “We’ll start looking at all these projects and see if they’re economically viable. The Serbia-Bulgaria one is high up on the list.”
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