July 15 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's Supreme Administrative Court said it has reinstated Saudi-led consortium Arkad as winner in a tender for construction of a leg of TurkStream gas pipeline in the country, upholding a decision of the local anti-trust body, CPC.
The decision of the Commission for Protection of Competition (CPC) is legitimate and must remain in force, the court said in its ruling published last week.
The complaint against the competition authority's decision was filed by a consortium comprising Italy's Consorzio Varna 1 and the Bulgarian branch of Luxembourg-registered Completions Development, which Bulgarian gas transmission operator Bulgartransgaz has named as winner after giving up its original choice of Arkad.
Bulgatransgaz originally named Arkad group as winner of its tender for construction of a 484 km-long pipeline for transit of gas from the border with Turkey to the border with Serbia but subsequently dropped Arkad and named as winner the second-ranked consortium.
CPC said that Bulgartransgaz had been unlawfully holding parallel talks with the Consorzio Varna 1 - Completions Development consortium after ranking Arkad first in the tender. Subsequently, the second-ranked consortium offered a price discount for the construction of the pipeline in violation of legal requirements, CPC said.
Arkad had proposed to build the pipeline for 1.29 billion euro ($1.45 billion) within 250 days, or for 1.10 billion euro within 615 days. The Consorzio Varna 1 - Completions Development group initially offered to build the pipeline for 2.41 billion euro and 1.60 billion euro, respectively, but subsequently lowered its offer for the 615-day period to 1.10 billion euro.
The court also backed a CPC's decision regarding the urgency of the tender procedure. Bulgartransgaz claimed that the procedure is of great importance for Bulgaria's economy and therefore must not be halted but CPC said those claims were unfounded.
The court said its decision is final and can not be appealed.
At the end of January, Bulgartransgaz successfully completed the binding Phase 3 of the economic test for the pipeline project - part of a larger project of Russia's Gazprom to build a string of its TurkStream pipeline for transit of gas to Europe from Turkey via Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary.
The offshore section of the TurkStream pipeline stretching 930 km across the Black Sea from Russia to Turkey consists of two parallel strings with annual throughput capacity of 15.75 billion cubic metres of gas each. One string is intended for consumers in Turkey, while the second will carry gas to customers in Europe through Bulgaria.
($ = 0.8825 euro)