BAJATOVIĆ: Contract defined for gas storage "Banatski Dvor"

The Director General of public company "Srbijagas", Dušan Bajatović, said today (July 16, 2009) that the text of the contract for founding joint venture with "Gazprom" for completion of underground gas storage in Banatski Dvor had been completed and agreed on.

- The time left until the contract is signed is measured in days - Bajatović said to the press in Belgrade and added that the contract on gas storage "Banatski Dvor" would be signed by "Srbijagas", "Gazprom" and Austrian daughter-company "Gazprom".

As he explained, the contract should be forwarded tomorrow morning to the services of the Government of Serbia in order to be adopted at the meeting on next Thursday (July 24th) or before that at the phone meeting, if needed.

Immediately after the contract is signed, Gazprom's gas will be pumped into the storage in Banatski Dvor, as well as in the gas storage in Hungary if the agreement is reached with "Eon" and "Mol".

The Director General of "Srbijagas" said that that company had about 120m cubic meters of gas in the storage in Banatski Dvor at the moment, as well as about 15m cubic meters of gas that had been pumped into the storage since the beginning of July.

According to earlier agreement, the ownership share of "Srbijagas" in Banatski Dvor should amount to 175m cubic meters of gas, while Russian side should own 350m, in addition to investments.

At the end of the investment, the capacity of gas storage Banatski Dvor will range between 800m and 1 billion cubic meters of gas.

Bajatović said that the delivery of equipment for construction of gas pipeline Gospođinci - Banatski Dvor was in progress, but that there were certain minor problems with the earth works on the gas pipeline because of the rain.