BAKU, Azerbaijan, July 26. The Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB) will be fully operational in the next half of 2022, Kiril Petkov, Prime Minister of the Republic of Bulgaria, said in an exclusive interview with Trend.
“For 12 years during the previous government, the IGB project hasn’t been finished, it was delayed. I am very proud to have led the government that managed to complete this project in six months. In the next weeks, the IGB will be fully operating. It is finished on 99 percent and in the next half of the year, the IGB will be fully operating. We’re looking at a few remaining activities that absolutely need to be completed prior to commercial launch to make sure everything is working safely and properly and that we’ve kept the highest industry standards,” Petkov explained.
He pointed out that the EPC contractor AVAX needs to proceed in a prompt manner with the remaining activities for the integration and testing of the SCADA system.
“The rest is mostly under the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian and Greek institutions – a number of administrative procedures that have to be completed so that we can get the project’s equivalent of Act 16. The usual deadlines here can take about 3 months but we boosted Bulgaria a prealignment process with all institutions proactively asking for their green light for ensuring IGB’s commercial start. There is an active and dedicated political and institutional support to limit the estimated timeline,” said the prime minister.
Petkov went on to add that in Bulgaria there’s already an established working group with representatives of all relevant institutions that are set to work on ways to optimize the procedural deadlines.