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Victoria Mindova

Each year the consumption of natural gas in Europe will increase with 0.8%-0.9% until 2030, said in front of journalists Sergey Komlev – Director of the pricing and structure department in Gazprom. Sergey Komlev is participating in the International Symposium for energy regulation, which takes place today and tomorrow in Athens. The percentages are a result of the summarized researched of eight international agencies for energy market analysis.

The “South Stream” pipeline is a project, which satisfied the increasing demand of natural gas in central and southeastern Europe. On one hand the pipeline will increase consumption of natural gas in Europe and on the other it will give an alternative solution for consumers at a time of crisis – like the one at the beginning of 2009, when Ukraine and Russia had an argument and as a result Ukraine stopped the supply of natural gas for central and eastern Europe.

Natural gas is an energy, which conforms to the requirements of the EU for protecting the environment, because it does not release harmful emissions while burning. Besides this it is very competitive when it comes to price in comparison to electricity and oil.

According to Sergey Komlev the newly elected governments in Greece and Bulgaria, will not change the agreements signed with the previous governments. For Greece he said: “Historically we have very good connections with Greece and more specifically with PASOK. In any case this should not be understood as a sign that we did not have good relations with the previous government, quite the opposite.”

This week Turkey gave permission to Russia to start drilling and researching it aquatory in the Black Sea, in order to realize the project. Negotiations with Slovenia and Austria need to be finalized and by the end of November cooperation with Serbia will also be created.

It is expected that by the end of this year a final agreement will be signed between the Greek public gas company DEFA and Russia. Internal researches will start during the first six months of 2010 for all, who want to be part of building the “road” of the pipeline. During the second part of the year those researches will be joined and a final plan will be realized for building “South Stream”. The final date for finishing the project is 2015.