Mario Tanev
SOFIA (Bulgaria), June 10 (SeeNews) - ICGB, the company developing the Gas Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria project, said that it has signed a 5.67 million euro ($6.41 million) contract with the TIBEI consortium, which won the tender for selecting an owner's engineer for the project.
The contract was signed on May 20, according to a notice by the ICGB, published on Friday.
The TIBEI consortium comprises Belgium's Tractebel Engineering S.A, Italy's Tractebel Engineering SRL, Austria's Intber GmbH and Bulgarian companies Ipsilon Consult and Bulgaria Engineering.
"The commitment involves assisting the Contracting Entity in the implementation of the project during the construction phase until the pipeline enters into operation and management of all the main contracts related to the project - including the contract for the supply of line pipes and the contract for the award of design, procurement and construction," ICGB has said previously.
The tender attracted 12 offers, four of which advanced to the evaluation stage of the public procurement procedure. Besides TIBEI, the other three offers proceeded to the final stage came from Enereco S.p.A, Technip Italy Direzione Lavori, and C&M-Asprofos-S Energy-Miks.
The IGB pipeline, which has a total estimated cost of some 220 million euro, will connect the Greek gas transmission system in the area of Komotini to the Bulgarian gas transmission system in the area of Stara Zagora.
The planned length of the pipeline is 182 km and the projected capacity will be up to 3 billion cu m per year in the direction from Greece to Bulgaria. Depending on interest from the market and the capacities of the neighbouring gas transmission systems, the capacity of the pipeline can be increased up to 5 billion cu m per year, thus allowing for physical reverse flow from Bulgaria to Greece with the additional installation of a compressor station.
The project is being implemented by the joint venture company ICGB, in which state-owned Bulgarian Energy Holding (BEH) and Greece-registered IGI Poseidon hold equal shares. Greek public gas corporation DEPA and Italian energy group Edison own 50% each of IGI Poseidon.
($ = 0.8849 euro)
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