Serbian prime minister Aleksandar Vucic said on Tuesday that Russia's decision
to abandon the South Stream gas pipeline project is not good news for
Serbia.
On Monday, Russian president Vladimir Putin said Russia had
shelved plans to build South Stream and is instead ready to build another
pipeline system to Turkey.
The South Stream project, spearheaded by
Russia's Gazprom, was planned to carry gas from Russia to central and southern
Europe via Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovenia.
The construction of
South Stream's offshore part cannot start as Bulgaria has not given its
permission and Russia has been forced to reconsider its participation in the
project, Putin further said.
South Streamis a good project, to which
Serbia did not turn its back even under the greatest possible pressure, Vucic
said in a video file posted on the website of his Serbian Progressive
Party.
In June, the Bulgarian government said it had halted the
construction of the gas pipeline on its territory until it complies with EU
legislation.
Commercial operation of South Stream - whose total value was
estimated at 16 billion euro ($19.9 billion), was scheduled to start by the end
of 2015 with the pipeline reaching its full capacity of some 63 billion cubic
metres per year by 2017.
In Serbia, a deal worth around 2.1 billion
eurofor the construction of the local section of the pipeline was signed in
July between state-owned gas company Srbijagas and Russia's Centrgaz,
99.99%-owned by Gazprom. The local stretch of the pipeline was planned to run
for 422.4 kilometres.