The pipe-line Bourgas-Alexandroupolis has been concerning us for more than 15 years and it is still in construction. But there is one new project, which is about to get ahead of it – a gas pipe, which will connect the cities Komotini and Dimitrovgrad, it will be between 120 and 125 kilometers long, its construction will cost ?45 million, and it will be financed by the European Union. The decision to build the gas pipe was made on the energy forum, which took place in Sofia on Friday. During the forum, Bulgaria and Greece signed a Memorandum for Energy Cooperation, part of which is the construction of the new gas pipe.

The gas pipe will be connected to the already existing one between Turkey, Greece, and Italy, which carries gas from Azerbaijan and it will be two-way – it will be able to supply and receive gas both ways. “Ensuring energy security, without a doubt came out to be the biggest challenge of our era,” said Kostas Karamanlis in his speech in front of the energy forum in Sofia. He also spoke about the pipe line Bourgas-Alexandroupolis, which according to him is going to be finished by 2012 and it will carry 50 million tons of raw petrol per year. The goal of the pipe line is to reduce the weight of the tanker traffic through Bosporus.

Kostas Karamanlis also said that Greece intends to increase the deliveries of liquefied natural gas from Algeria, which right now are kept in a special repository on Revitousa island near Athens.

Meanwhile the Greek Minister of Development Kostis Hadzidakis disproved the Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov by saying for “Imersia” newspaper that, until 2020 the Greek energy strategy does not plan nuclear energy sources development. Earlier during the week, in an interview for newspaper “Naftemboriki” President Parvanov said that the moment is extremely convenient for cooperation between Bulgaria and Greece in the field of nuclear power engineering.

A Greek source from the energy field said for grreporter.info that Greece is really considering investing in nuclear power engineering but in the Bulgarian power engineering and more specifically in constructing Belene Nuclear Power Plant. Greece has been following the investor fluctuation in the nuclear plant and is carefully researching the possibility to invest but of course, not on a state level. As a most probable investor in Belene, the source pointed the DEPA company.