Macedonia will participate in the construction of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, but only after the EU and Russia have reached an agreement on the strategic project, Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said Wednesday.

“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.

Russia and Greece are currently working on a memorandum for the construction of a gas pipeline from the Greek-Turkish border to pump Russian natural gas from the Turkish Stream pipe further on to Europe. The Greek stretch of the pipeline is expected to run to the Macedonian border.

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.