Plinacro was given first instalment of CEF grant for the project of the main LNG transit gas pipeline on Zlobin-Bosiljevo-Sisak-Kozarac-Slobodnica direction

In July this year Plinacro was awarded a 2.25 million euro grant from the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) fund, a funding mechanism for infrastructure projects for transport, energy and telecommunications, for its project of the main LNG transit gas pipeline on Zlobin-Bosiljevo-Sisak-Kozarac-Slobodnica direction. The grant for the project was recently formalized with the signing of a grant agreement no. INEA/CEF/ENER/M2015/1027646, between Plinacro and the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA), which signed the document on behalf of the European Commission.
 
Since Plinacro received the mentioned grant to cover half of the costs of preparatory project activities, the Agreement defined that the grant will be used for the feasibility study and the investment request, consisting of the business plan (including the market test), the cost benefit analysis (CBA analysis) and the cross-border cost allocation (CBCA). Along with this, the money will be used to prepare the main and detailed design for all gas pipeline sections, from Zlobin to Slobodnica. In other words, the CEF fund will co-finance the pre-investment project phase.
 
The Agreement defined that INEA will pay the first instalment immediately upon the signing of the agreement, therefore Plinacro received 40 percent of the totally approved grant. The remainder will be paid upon the completion of preparatory activities, which was planned in the first half of 2018.
 
The Zlobin-Bosiljevo-Sisak-Kozarac-Slobodnica gas pipeline project was included on the second List of Projects of Common Interest of the European Union (PCI) in mid-November, and it had already been included on the CESEC list of priority projects that would provide natural gas diversification and security of gas supply to EU member countries from the Central and Southeast Europe. This gas pipeline is expected to be a part of a Baltic-Adriatic gas corridor which would link the Polish and Croatian LNG terminals. It is crucial for a reliable and secure supply of natural gas to countries in the wider region. The gas pipeline would be connected to the existing interconnection Croatia-Hungary and to the planned interconnections with Serbia (Slobodnica-Sotin-Bačko Novo Selo) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Slobodnica-Brod-Zenica). Without this gas pipeline, it would be impossible to transport gas from LNG terminals to said countries, and via Hungary further to Slovakia and Ukraine, and via Serbia to Romania and Bulgaria.