Bulgaria's energy minister Traicho Traikov has said a gas pipeline link with Greece will most likely go on stream by the end of 2014, around a year later than previously planned, Bulgarian media reported on Monday.
Traikov said in December last year he expected first natural gas to start flowing through the link in early 2013, Dnevnik business daily (www.dnevnik.bg) said.
In November, state-run Bulgarian Energy Holding (BEH) and IGI Poseidon, a 50/50 partnership between Greece's DEPA and Italy's Edison, signed a contract for the construction of the gas link worth an estimated 150 million euro ($214.3 million). IGI Poseidon is building the Greek-Italian section of the Interconnection Turkey-Greece-Italy (ITGI) pipeline, designed to link Azerbaijan and Italy and carry Azeri and Iranian natural gas to Europe.