Greek utility company Gastrade signed a series of cooperation agreements with North Macedonia’s National Energy Resources (NER) and the Joint Stock Company for electricity generation Macedonian Power Plants (ESM) for the Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) terminal of Alexandroupolis.
NER aims to acquire a stake in Gastrade, while ESM is interested in booking capacity at the Terminal on a long-term basis.
“We are happy to join our forces with both NER AD and AD ESM in the project,” said Konstantinos Spyropoulos, Gastrade’s managing director. “Today’s signing of the agreement is to the mutual benefit of our companies and most importantly to the benefit of the consumers in the Republic of North Macedonia and of the Western Balkans. We are looking forward to making this agreement a basis for further expanding the reach of our Project taking also an advantage of North Macedonia’s strategic location as a gateway to the markets of the Western Balkans. We are proud to add to the ties of our two countries and to support the regional cooperation and understanding in our neighbourhood. We are confident that we can work constructively together in strengthening the energy diversification and independence of our region.”
The floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) will be located 17.6 kilometres southwest of the port of Alexandroupolis and will have an LNG storage capacity of up to 170,000 cubic metres and a natural gas sent out capacity that will exceed 5.5 billion cubic metres per year. The floating unit will be connected to the National Natural Gas System of Greece via a 28 kilometres long pipeline, through which the regasified LNG will be transmitted to the markets of Greece, Bulgaria and the wider region, from Romania, Serbia and North Macedonia to Hungary, Moldova and Ukraine.
This is a priority project of the European Union, which strengthens the security of supply, diversifies energy sources and routes and supports the development of competition as well as the implementation of a gas hub in the wider region of Southeastern Europe, with obvious benefits for all final consumers.
The project operates in harmony with the other existing or planned major gas infrastructure projects in the region, such as the Greece-Bulgaria (IGB) interconnection, the Greece-Northern Macedonia interconnection, the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), the Bulgaria-Serbia interconnection (IBS) and the LNG terminal of Revithoussa.
