Speaking during a visit to Turkey last night, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Russia was dropping plans for the construction of the South Stream gas pipeline that was supposed to enter EU territory from the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. The statement by Gazprom’s Chief Executive Alexei Miller was even more scathing. The two laid the blame directly at Bulgaria’s door, saying that the country had knuckled under to foreign interests, meaning the European Commission and was not behaving like a sovereign state. The benefits for Bulgaria from the passage of the pipeline across its territory would have been EUR 400 million a year, Putin said. And to add insult to injury, the Russian President added that a pipeline would be built by sea via Turkey, with a hub at the border with Greece to supply Europe with Russian gas.

After Brussels and Washington’s relations with Moscow deteriorated, many analysts intimated that the negative attitude to the gas pipeline project coming from the powers that be in Europe and America could only get worse. Some with a modicum of diplomacy, others quite plainly, the Western leaders explained that this pipeline would not be much use regarding energy security or the diversification of gas supply sources as it would again be supplying Europe with gas from Russia, with the only diversification being that of the transport routes.

The attitude to South Stream in Bulgaria also varied. For example, Russophiles would say that the country will benefit considerably from the pipeline – in terms of transiting revenues as well as security of delivery levels, as Russian gas is delivered directly by the supplier bypassing unreliable mediators such as Ukraine. Politicians and experts with more pro-European leanings on the other hand would say that direct Russian deliveries make the country’s dependence on Russia even more direct. They took advantage of the European Commission’s negative view of the gas pipeline, which did not deem the project important but did consider it to be in contravention of European law. Between a rock and a hard place, Bulgaria made up its mind, not without outside pressure, to freeze its construction. A substantial role in this compromise decision was played by the deterioration of relations between Russia and the West in the wake of the Ukraine conflict. The pressure Moscow exerted in the opposite direction proved insufficient to sway Sofia away from Brussels.

One of the chief arguments of Bulgarian experts in favour of South Stream was and still is the need to diversify supply routes that would boost energy security. What a disruption of gas deliveries entails is something we had first-hand experience of five years ago, when in mid-winter, gas deliveries were halted in Ukraine, affecting households as well as businesses in Bulgaria. But worse was to come when significant economic and political interests gave preference to the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) rather than to Nabucco-West which was supposed to transport gas from Azerbaijan to Europe via Bulgaria. Disappointment in Bulgaria after this decision ran high. Now, for the second time, the country is being ousted from a major international energy project and is being cast as the scapegoat in geopolitical conflicts and interests; to top it all it is now the chief culprit for the fiasco. And that is something that goes a long way to strain the relations between Sofia and Moscow. In light of the fact that for all sorts of reasons – historical, cultural and religious – the Russian and the Bulgarian nations are very close and on very friendly terms, all this will probably mean playing directly into the hands of the anti-Europeans who will blame Brussels for the crisis.

As things stand now that Russia has decided to scrap South Stream and in view of the urgent need of greater security of gas deliveries to Bulgaria, the country has no other option in the foreseeable future than to speed up the construction of the gas interconnectors with neighbouring countries – Romania, Turkey and Greece – to be used as an alternative for gas deliveries to households and businesses when the need arises. And of course it would be best if cost-effective gas deposits were to be found on Bulgarian territory – and there are hopes of this happening.

English Milena Daynova