Bosnia gave the green light on Wednesday to an energy project that provides for the construction of a gas pipeline and thermal power plants, an investment of over one billion euros by some close to the White House, reports AFP, taken by Agerpres.
This project of about 1.5 billion dollars (1.3 billion euros) is proposed by the company AAFS Infrastructure and Energy, led by Joseph Flynn, the brother of General Michael Flynn, former adviser for national security in the first term of Donald Trump, and by Jesse Binnall, former lawyer of the American president.
“This investment will be fully financed by AAFS,” Vedran Lakic, the energy minister of the Muslim-Croatian Federation, one of Bosnia's two constituent entities, insisted at the beginning of April.
The gas pipeline, which will be built and operated by AAFS, is to connect Bosnia to the European network and especially to the LNG terminal in Krk, in the north of the Croatian Adriatic, where a significant amount of American gas arrives.
Bosnia depends exclusively on Russian gas
The maximum annual capacity of the new interconnector will be 3 billion cubic meters and will allow the supply of three or even four gas thermal power plants whose construction is also planned.
According to the initiators of the project, it will allow Bosnia to diversify its natural gas supply and reduce its dependence on Russia, its only current supplier. Also, gas could replace coal, in a country that suffers a lot from pollution.
The text of the law on the “southern gas interconnector with Croatia” was adopted on Wednesday by one of the two chambers of the parliament of the Croatian-Muslim Federation, a week after it had been approved by the other chamber of the entity, the only one with decision-making power since the gas pipeline will pass through its territory.
The next stage will be the signing of an agreement between the American company, presented in the law as an investor, and the government of the Croatian-Muslim Federation, and of an agreement between Bosnia and Croatia, which would be signed at the end of April, on the occasion of a summit in Dubrovnik.
Details on the start of construction work have not been announced, but the project is all the more pressing as Bosnia could be targeted by the ban on importing Russian gas to Europe from the end of 2027.
