Romania’s Energy Minister has issued the building permit for the gas pipeline that will connect Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Austria (BRUA), according to a press release sent on Friday by the Energy Ministry.

BRUA will connect Eastern and Central Europe to the gas fields in the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea.

The work on the project will start at the end of the year, and the gas pipeline will become operational in 2020, when ExxonMobil and OMV Petrom will start to extract natural gas from the Black Sea, the Energy Minister, Toma Petcu told the public broadcaster Radio Romania Actualitati.

The project will get financial support from the European Union through the so-called Mechanism of Projects of Common Interest, amounting to almost EUR 180 million. The Romanian authorities will add another EUR 220 million to this project.

The new pipeline will have a total length of 550 km and a maximum capacity of 1.5 billion cubic meters per year to Bulgaria and 4.4 billion cubic meters per year to Hungary. Hungary is now dependent on Russian gas imports.

editor@romania-insider.com