Bulgaria has promised to complete the TurkStream pipeline section on its territory by 2020, as scheduled, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday, trying to remove question marks on the timing of this project, Reuters reports.

Last month, Bulgaria signed a 1.1 billion-euro contract with Saudi Arabia’s Arkad group for the construction of a gas pipeline that would mainly transport Russian natural gas to Serbia from Bulgaria’s border with Turkey, according to Agerpres.

Sofia hopes that this 474-kilometer pipeline, called Balkan Stream, will become operational by 2020, but given that the agreement with the Saudi firm was signed only last month, some analysts have expressed some doubts regarding this calendar.

At the end of a meeting with Bulgarian counterpart Ekaterina Zaharieva, the Russian Foreign Minister said he had received assurances that the second part of TurkStream pipeline would be ready in time. “The partners stressed that the works will be completed on time, by 2020,” Lavrov said.