24-10-01 Romania's efforts to increase the capacity of a pipeline transporting natural gas from Russia to Turkey has moved into another stage, Industry Minister Dan Ioan Popescu said recently.
The pipeline's capacity has been raised to 16 bn cm annually, from 10 bn cm, after an upgrade of more than two thirds of the 200 km section crossing Romanian territory, Popescu said.

The remaining 35 km will be upgraded by March of 2002, expanding capacity to 20 bn cm. This project, which costs $ 185 mm, has been financed by the Russian natural gas company Gazprom and the Romanian state-owned gas transport company TransGas.
Gazprom covered more than 60 % of the costs by offering TransGas 1.4 bn cm of gas.