Bulgaria’s interim energy minister said the country is getting closer to restarting gas purchase negotiations with Gazprom, just months after the recently-ousted governing coalition cut ties with the Russian company.
A worker works at the construction site of the Balkan Stream gas pipeline near the village of Kamenovo, Bulgaria, 01 June 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/VASSIL DONEV
Bulgaria’s interim Energy Minister Rosen Hristov said on Monday that the country’s caretaker administration will probably start negotiations with Gazprom, a few months after the coalition led by recently-ousted Prime Minister Kiril Petkov cut ties with the Russia gas giant after declining to pay in rubles and cut deals with the US and Azerbaijan.
“This is inevitable and these negotiations will be hard,” Hristov told local media, saying that Bulgaria will have no gas resources after September.
This contradicts a statement from August 17 by the new director of Bulgargaz, Denitza Zlateva, who said that there are resources until the end of the year.
Bulgaria’s caretaker cabinet has said it will renegotiate the gas agreement with Azerbaijan, a deal that the previous government said was almost finalised.
It has also said will also accept only one of the seven cargo shipments of liquefied gas offered by the US, and has expressed scepticism about the functionality of the Bulgaria-Greece gas interconnector pipeline. It insists the pipeline is far from ready, and has various technological and documentation issues, while according to Petkov’s cabinet it was almost ready.
According to politicians associated with Petkov’s coalition, which was ousted by the opposition, the moves by the interim government will only bring Russian influence back into local politics.
Vladislav Panev, a former MP and member of Democratic Bulgaria, part of the ousted coalition, said there is no way a Gazprom deal can be cheaper than other offers.
“All the talk about how we will die without Russian gas is a lie. This is obviously a plan to confuse society, and this plan includes the abandonment of six of the seven LNG ships [from the US], the so-called search for other alternatives and sabotaging the interconnector [between Bulgaria and Greece],” Panev wrote on Monday on social media.
In April, Bulgaria cut ties with Gazprom amid worsened diplomatic relations after the invasion of Ukraine and EU sanctions on Russia.
Petkov’s coalition then secured deals with Azerbaijan and the US, with gas supplies to be transferred through the link between Bulgaria and Greece.
This course changed after the coalition fell and on August 1, an interim government by President Rumen Radev, who is sceptical about Bulgaria distancing itself from Gazprom, came to power.
The allegedly pro-Russian policies of the interim government have sparked protests in Sofia.
Russia’s ambassador to Sofia, Eleonora Mitrofanova, has sought to encourage a return to doing business with Gazprom.
“In order to restore gas supplies, a new contract is not needed as the current one runs until the end of December this year. The missed months without supplies may also be subject to negotiations. Everything depends on you,” Mitrofanova told the bTV channel on Sunday.
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