Bosnia advances bill to build new gas pipeline

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Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina — Bosnia inched closer to building a new pipeline to import natural gas to the Balkan country, which remains entirely dependent on supplies from Russia.

The bill concerning the pipeline was approved by legislators in the Bosnia-Croat statelet’s parliament late Thursday, with strong backing by the US Embassy in Sarajevo.

A final vote on the legislation is still needed by another parliamentary body, following years of political roadblocks.

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The new pipeline would connect to energy infrastructure in neighboring Croatia.

Bosnia currently depends entirely on Russian natural gas via a pipeline connected with Serbia.

Serbia — which maintains a close relationship with Moscow since its invasion of Ukraine — has long relied on Russia for its energy needs, including over 90 percent of its natural gas supplies in 2023.

Talk of building a new pipeline has been ongoing for years in deeply divided Bosnia.

Since the end of Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war, the country has consisted of two semi-independent entities — a Muslim-Croat federation and the Serbs’ Republika Srpska (RS).

The leader of Bosnia’s largest ethnic Croat party, Dragan Covic, has scuttled the pipeline legislation in the past in a push to ensure the project would be built and overseen by a Croat-backed company, rather than one controlled by Bosniak Muslims.