The expansion of the Serbian underground gas storage Banatski Dvor is one step closer to being realized after a decade and a half of planning and preparation. The storage facility will be expanded from the 427 to 711 million cubic meters.
The Provincial Secretariat for Urban Planning and Environmental Protection recently adopted decision on the scope and the contents of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) study of the project of the expansion of the existing underground gas storage Banatski Dvor.
in 2015, Russian Gazprom and Serbian Srbijagas signed an agreement, according to which, the storage facility was supposed to be expanded to a billion cubic meters. Two years later, the Memorandum of Understanding was signed at the International Economic Forum in Saint Petersburg, which envisaged the preparation of a technical and financial feasibility study for the expansion of the capacities of the only Serbian underground gas storage facility, whose majority owner is the Russian Gazprom.
As said at the time, regardless of the study results, the capacity of the underground gas storage facility could be increased from 450 to 750 million cubic meters.
The most recent agreement on the same matter was signed in 2019. In 2019, Serbian authorities also announced the construction of a storage facility in Itebej, with a capacity of around a billion cubic meters, as well as another one near Pancevo.