Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has opened a new route for natural gas imports from Russia, the country's largest gas importer Energoinvest told journalists here on Wednesday.
The new route runs across Turkey, Bulgaria and Serbia and replaces the previously used route via Ukraine, Hungary and Serbia, said Bisera Hadzialjevic, director of Energoinvest.
Both routes enter BiH near Zvornik, some 140 kilometers northeast of the capital Sarajevo, Hadzialjevic said, explaining that the change of route has been imposed by Gazprom Export, BiH's only gas supplier.
She said that the change will bring benefits to BiH as the price of gas imported through the new route is about 25 percent lower than that via Ukraine and Hungary.
Gazprom Export began to supply gas to Serbia via the TurkStream pipeline on Jan. 1, 2021. BiH is the sixth European country to receive Russian gas via this route after Bulgaria, Greece, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia.
The TurkStream pipeline stretches from Russia to Turkey across the Black Sea. Its annual transport capacity is 31.5 billion cubic meters.
BiH's annual natural gas consumption was 235 million cubic meters in 2019, the Agency for Statistics of BiH said.
Editor: Leon
