SOFIA, May 27. /ITAR-TASS/. Stroytransgaz Consortium comprised of the Russian Stroytransgaz oil and gas construction company and Bulgarian Gazproekt Jug AD has won the tender for the design, equipment supplies and construction of the main pipeline South Stream’s 541-kilometer section in Bulgaria.

The public tender that started last December gathered 11 contenders from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, India, Italy, Russia, Switzerland and Japan.

Stroyrtransgaz is preparing to get the €6.6 billion contracts for the construction of South Stream dry sections in Bulgaria, Serbia and Slovenia.

Bulgarian section of the pipeline is the first dry section along the route, the most technologically complicated and capital-intensive. From the Black Sea coast to the border with Serbia, the company will lay the pipeline and a 59-kilometer spur to the gas distribution junction in the town of Provadia that will redistribute gas to the Bulgarian pipeline system and further to the customers of Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece and Macedonia.

A receiving terminal and three compressor stations with a total 300 MW capacity are planned near the city of Varna, and Lozen and Rasovo villages.

On November 21, 2013, Gennady Timchenko’s STG Group consolidated 50% of Stroytransgaz. Once consolidation of Timchenko’s construction assets on the basis of Stroytransgaz is completed, Stroytransgaz Holding Limited (STGH) will be held by Timchenko’s Volga Group (63%), Gazprombank (20%) and the companies of Timchenko’s partners Mikhail Kenin and Maxim Vorobyov (17%).

South Stream is Gazprom’s global infrastructure project, a pipeline with a capacity of 63 billion cubic metres to run through the Black Sea to the countries of South and Eastern Europe intended to diversify routes for natural gas export and exclude transit risks. The pipeline planned to be commissioned in 2018 will start supplying gas in late 2015.