(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly)
Michael Davenport, head of the EU Delegation in Serbia, on Friday that he had not been able to clarify the Serbian Foreign Minister's claim that the EU was being "hypocritical towards Serbia" about the South Stream pipeline, because the EU wanted to bypass Serbia with the new pipeline project, called East Ring.
Davenport said that Maros Sefcovic, from the European Commission, had been in Serbia recently and had discussed gas issues and potential supply routes with the Serbian Prime Minister and the Energy Minister.
"I was told me that the gas issue is a major priority for Serbia and that one of the projects is the gas interconnector between Bulgaria and Serbia," Davenport said, noting that the EU is willing to help finance the project.
Following the International Economic Forum in Russia on June 18, when Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic met with Alexei Miller, the President of the board of Russia's Gazprom, and Alexander Novak, Russia's Energy Minister, Dacic said he had been told that European officials had offered to help Russia build the new gas pipeline, East Ring, which would pass through Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia, avoiding Serbia.
Russia scrapped its plans to build the South Stream gas pipeline via Serbia, among other countries, in December 2014, following growing tensions with the EU over the conflict in Ukraine.
Speaking in St Petersburg, Dacic accused the EU officials of hypocrisy, saying they were "the main reason" why the South Stream project had failed.
"When Russian gas should go through Serbia, is a political problem, but when it should go through Western and Northern Europe it is just the economy and has nothing to do with politics," he complained.
Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia signed an agreement in Riga, Latvia, in May 2014 to start building the East Ring pipeline in 2018.
Although this new infrastructure will bypass Serbia, construction of a Serbia-Bulgaria connection would allow a certain amount of gas to flow to Serbia via the new pipeline, Beta news agency reported, citing sources in Brussels.
Possible sources of gas for the East Ring pipeline, apart from Russia, would be Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Iraq and Cyprus.
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