An explosion took place this morning on the Bulgaria-Greece natural gas transit pipeline in the Kulata area of Bulgaria. The pipeline is part of the international transit system Trans-Balkan has a diameter of 720 mm and a length – in the Bulgarian section – of 128 km, according to the Intelligent Energy Association.

The pipe was built in 1998 and was designed to transport 4.0 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia (via Ukraine, Moldova, Romania) to Greece, at a maximum operating pressure of 54 bar. Starting with 2014, the bus was modernized by the Greek operator DESFA for the possibility to take gas from the Greek national system and transport it to Bulgaria and further to Europe, the start of commercial operation being postponed until 2019 due to the delay of modernization works from the Bulgarian sector and the signing of the new interconnection agreement. Currently, the Bulgaria-Greece DN720 gas pipeline takes over the volumes of gas brought to Bulgaria through the new Turk-Stream system and facilitates their transit to Greece.

It is the fourth major incident in the last 10 years in Bulgaria’s international transit system, after the 2011 Kalekovets, Gorska Polyana and 2014 Strandja explosions, highlighting the current limitations of Bulgaria’s international gas system and the need for major investments, already started by the Bulgarian operator.