Brussels, 14/01/2016 (Agence Europe) - The Russian gas pipeline project South Stream is dead and buried, but Bulgaria is hoping to bring it back to life in another form to feed into its own gas platform project, Balkan: this is the ambition expressed by the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Boïko Borissov, on Wednesday 13 January.
The gas pipeline project South Stream, which aimed to connect Russia to the European market under the Black Sea, but which was abandoned by Moscow in late 2015 due to an increasing number of obstacles flagged up by the European Commission, will become the gas pipeline project Bulgarian Stream, to be 100% owned by Bulgaria, Borissov told the Bulgarian Parliament, according to several media reports.
“South Stream is in the past. The Balkan distribution centre is now on the agenda and we are working to make it a priority of the Commission”, said the Bulgarian Prime Minister.
The shelving of South Stream was a major blow to Bulgaria, which is highly dependent on Russian gas and which would have served as a point of entry and of transit for Russian gas into south-eastern Europe.
Borissov explained on Wednesday that a gas platform near to the port of Varna, on the Black Sea, and named Balkan, would serve Serbia and Austria.
According to Bulgarian experts, this project could be up and running in around 2021-2023 and is reported to have secured the Commission's agreement in principle, as long as it is economically viable.
This distribution centre could be fed into by two under-sea gas pipelines linked to Russia with a capacity of 10 billion m3 of gas a year each (compared to 63 billion m3 for South Stream).
“It will be Bulgarian Stream. If the Russian side agreed to sell its gas at our border, they are welcome. And we will abide by the Third Energy Package”, Borissov said.
Russian pipes earmarked for use in the under-sea section of the South Stream gas pipeline are still being stored in the Bulgarian ports of Varna and Bourgas and could be used for this purpose, experts state.
This Bulgarian proposal comes at a time when the Turkish Stream gas pipeline project between Russia and Turkey, devised by Moscow in late 2014 to replace South Stream, is deeply compromised by the worsening of relations between Moscow and Ankara against the backdrop of the Syrian conflict.
The platform Balkan would also be supplied by connection to the future TransAdriatique gas pipeline (TAP), to bring gas from the Caspian Sea to Italy via Greece and Albania, as well as LNG arriving from Greece and gas from Bulgarian fields currently being explored.
The options for supplies of Russian gas to Bulgaria and the Balkan project will be examined at a session of the Bulgarian-Russian economic cooperation committee in Sofia on 27-28 January, the head of the Bulgarian government announced.
Along with eight other EU countries (Austria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia), Bulgaria is a member of the Central and South-Eastern Europe Gas Connection group (CESEC), which was created with the Commission in February 2015 (see EUROPE 11249).
In July 2015, CESEC also committed to a pan-European initiative with other countries of eastern and south-eastern Europe, which are members of the Energy Community, to speed up construction of missing links between their gas infrastructures (see EUROPE 11356). (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)