EU data: Bulgaria increased gas imports from Azerbaijan

Bulgaria imported 77.3 million cubic metres of gas from Azerbaijan in July 2023 compared to 74.8 million cubic metres in June.

Thus, the country increased natural gas imports from Azerbaijan by 3.3 per cent month-on-month, the European Union's statistical office Eurostat told Trend.

Overall, Azerbaijan exported 536.7 million cubic metres of gas to Bulgaria in the first seven months of 2023.

From January to July 2023, the value of exports amounted to 196.1 million euros. In July, it amounted to 23.9 million euros compared to 26.6 million euros in June, which means a decrease of 10.2 per cent.

It should be noted that Bulgaria started importing gas from Azerbaijan via the Greece-Bulgaria (IGB) interconnector, which was put into operation on October 1, 2022. The contracted volume of gas supplies through this interconnector is 1 billion cubic metres per year. The total capacity of IGB is 3 billion cubic metres with the possibility of expansion up to 5 billion cubic metres per year.

Azerbaijan supplies gas to Europe via the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which is part of the Southern Gas Corridor. Its capacity is 10 billion cubic metres with the possibility of expansion up to 20 billion cubic metres per year.

According to the Azerbaijani Ministry of Energy, the country exported 6.6 billion cubic metres of gas to Europe in January-July 2023.

As a whole, the volume of natural gas exports for the reported period amounted to 13.8 billion cubic metres, which is 7 per cent more than in January-July 2022.

In particular, 7.5 billion cubic metres of gas was produced from the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block of fields, 15.4 billion cubic metres from Shah Deniz, 5.1 billion cubic metres of gas was produced by the State Oil Company, 0.1 billion cubic metres of gas was produced from Absheron field.