PM Vucevic: Memorandum signed to build joint gas pipeline with North Macedonia

Photo: Tanjug/Serbian government/Slobodan Miljevic

Serbian PM Milos Vucevic said today in Skopje that the governments of Serbia and North Macedonia signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly build a 70-kilometer gas pipeline with a 14 billion cubic meters capacity.

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Vucevic held a press conference with North Macedonian PM Hristijan Mickoski and said the memorandum between the Serbian Ministry of Mining and Energy and the North Macedonia Ministry of Energy, Mining, and Mineral Resources would lead to the construction of a new natural gas interconnector.

Vucic said that the length is 70 kilometers while the annual capacity should be around 14 billion cubic meters, and that Serbia intends to get access to a gas supply route from the Greek city of Alexandroupolis, where the gas is coming from, via North Macedonia.

"The strategic decision of the Republic of Serbia is to diversify our natural gas supply sources. We, of course, do not want to lose any partners but to expand the number of partners interested in cooperating with us in the energy sector and that will definitely contribute to the energy stability of our state," Vucevic said.

He stressed that gas is of great importance for Serbia also in order to produce electricity, as well as for a large number of foreign companies operating in the country, and for supplying households.

"So it is natural for us to go this way through North Macedonia, towards the port in Greece. And what the prime minister of North Macedonia proposed is that an oil pipeline should be built in parallel so that we get the possibility of supplying oil to our country," said Vucevic.

He stressed that during the meeting with his Macedonian colleague, in addition to infrastructure, the issue of energy dominated and pointed out that we are all consuming more and more electricity, because industry is growing, but citizens are also consuming more and more electricity.

"We must understand climate change, we must understand what the green agenda of the European Union is, with which the Western Balkans must also agree or synchronize, and at the same time not lose economic and energy potential," said Vucevic.

According to him both countries will have to do a lot in that sense.

"A lot of work awaits us, so it is a good thing that we agreed to build a new gas interconnector," Vucevic added and pointed out that Serbia would certainly be better supplied with natural gas from the south because of this.

(Telegraf Biznis/Tanjug)