Balkan Chronicle: The South Stream or Nabucco: A New Dilemma of Europe?

Russia's gas giant Gazprom, who owns a 50% stake in the South Stream project, is ready to start construction of the project in three distinct stages under a so-called "1+2+1" scheme in order to make the project work at its full capacity of up to 63 Bcm/year by December of 2017.

It has already been announced that the construction of the first two lines of the South Stream, each with a capacity of 15.5 billion cubic meters, will start next month.

The biggest expectation of the Russian government and Gazprom is to transport the first gas via the Black sea to Bulgaria bypassing Ukraine and Belarus in 2015, and then add more lines in 2016 and 2017 to carry Russian gas to Greece, Italy, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, and Slovenia.  MORE