Energy

BRUSSELS - Serbia and Baden-Wurttemberg will work together on drafting a project of a bio-energy village that will use biomass to produce electricity, Serbian Minister of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Snezana Bogosavljevic Boskovic told Tanjug on Thursday.

Energy officials from three Balkan countries on Wednesday signed an agreement on the construction of a gas corridor that will interconnect their natural gas networks and will have a capacity of 3-5 billion cubic meters per year.

Zhecho Stankov, Deputy Energy Minister, has said that Bulgaria expects gas prices to drop by 35% from the current rate over the next few years due to the development of local deep water oil and gas blocks in the Black Sea.

Nord Pool Spot, the energy exchange running Europe's largest electricity market, signed Wednesday an agreement also to manage activity at IBEX, the Independent Bulgarian Energy Exchange.

As many as 380 companies from 20 states trade on the Nord Pool Spot. IBEX, on the other hand, was recently granted a 10-year license to organize the market in Bulgaria.

A Japanese court has rejected a legal bid to block the reopening of the Sendai nuclear power station on safety grounds, removing one of the last big hurdles to switching reactors back on after the 2011 Fukushima crisis paralyzed the industry. 

South Korea and the United States reached a deal on April 22 to revise a 40-year-old civil nuclear pact that gives the Asian country limited freedom to produce fuel for power generation but continues to curb its ability to reprocess spent fuel. 

The Plant for Mechanical Biological Treatment of Waste in Sofia will be the second largest in Europe, right after the unit in Spain's capital Madrid.

Construction of the gas interconnection grid between Bulgaria and Greece will begin in March 2016 and will be completed by the end of 2018, Bulgaria's Energy Minister has said.

Under initial plans, the infrastructure was to be in place and become operational sometime in 2018.

The European Commission has sent a statement of objections to Gazprom, accusing the Russian company of abusing its dominant market position and breaching EU antitrust rules.

Ir also says that Bulgaria is among the most heavily affected countries by what it describes as disputable practices on behalf of the Russian energy giant.

 Gazprom agrees to the creation of a consortium for the construction of gas pipeline?s Greek extension

By Chryssa Liaggou

The leap forward in Greek-Russian relations that the government had been hoping for did not happen on Tuesday during Gazprom chief Alexey Miller?s visit to Athens.