“As a country aiming to join the European community, this is exactly the guidelines we follow when making strategic decisions,” Gruevski said in an interview with Press24 online portal.
The Turkish Stream will serve as an alternative to the South Stream gas pipeline project abandoned by Russia in December 2014.
Nikola Gruevski also said that in the short run his country would experience no serious shortages of gas as it consumes less than half of the projected supply.
“The main problem is the high price, which the Russian side explains by low consumption… The less gas is supplied, the steeper the price, and the other way round,” he said.
In the future Macedonia will rely on gas supplies also via the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) and an interconnector linking Bulgaria with Romania and Turkey.
On December 1, 2014 Gazprom and Turkish company Botas Petroleum Pipeline Corporation signed a memorandum of understanding to build an offshore gas pipeline across the Black Sea towards Turkey.
The pipeline will have a capacity of 63 billion cubic meters, with nearly 50 billion cubic meters to be conveyed to a gas hub on the border between Turkey and Greece.
The two countries plan to ink a pertinent agreement in the second half of 2015, and pumping is to start in December 2016.
