OREANDA-NEWS. October 04, 2010. Led by Leonid Chugunov, Head of the Gazprom Project Management Department, the Company’s delegation paid a visit to the Republic of Macedonia.

In the course of the visit meetings were held with Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov and Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. In addition, negotiations were conducted with the delegation headed by Zoran Stavreski, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. Taking part in the negotiations were also representatives from a number of Macedonian companies.

Opportunities for Macedonia to join the South Stream project were discussed during the negotiations. Due to the accelerated gasification program being implemented in the country, power plants conversion to gas, power generating capacities buildup and thus a considerable gas consumption growth in the years to come, an agreement was reached to start a feasibility study for a potential increase in Russian gas supplies to the Republic by means of constructing, inter alia, a gas lateral to South Stream. It was noted that in case of positive feasibility study results the parties would work out a proposal to sign an appropriate intergovernmental agreement.

The interest expressed by Macedonia in the South Stream project speaks well for the relevance, importance and economic attractiveness of the pipeline aimed to diversify the Russian natural gas delivery routes and to increase the reliability of energy supply to Europe.
Background

Russian gas has been supplied to Macedonia since 1997.

In 2009 Gazprom provided the country with 0.1 billion cubic meters of natural gas.

Energy consumption in Macedonia is forecasted to reach 2.5 billion cubic meters per year after 2030 upon the natural gas fired power plants commissioning and the national gasification program implementation.