Last week Bulgarian Foreign Minister Daniel Mitov, while on an official visit to Slovakia, discussed Slovakia's so-called Eastring proposal for creating an infrastructure that would supply natural gas to Southeast Europe from Europe's North and West. The infrastructure in question would have been connected to the Turkish hub that is part of the plans for the Turkish Stream project and would allow gas supplies via Turkey from the Caspian basin, Iraq, Iran and the Eastern Mediterranean. After the end of Minister Mitov's Slovakia visit, talks on Eastring continued at the level of experts in Sofia, and it became known on Sunday that Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia were close to the signature of a memorandum for the construction of the Eastring gas pipeline from the Slovak-Ukrainian to the Bulgarian-Turkish borders. The gas pipeline is meant to open in 2018 and its capacity should reach 40 billion cubic meters of gas annually.

A day before Minister Mitov visited Slovakia, PM Boyko Borissov discussed with Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev in Sofia the idea to unfreeze the project for a transcontinental gas pipeline Nabucco. This project too, just like Eastring would supply non-Russian gas to Bulgaria. Borissov said that jointly with Aliyev he would table the issue at the European Commission immediately, however, experts have remarked that in fact the Nabucco West pipeline has not been terminated by way of a political resolution but by the project's shareholders.

The persistence with which the Bulgarian authorities have been looking for an alternative to Russian supplies is logical in view of an anticipated suspension of their transit via Ukraine. Fears over a gas crisis like the one in 2009 troubled the caretaker government that preceded the incumbent Borissov cabinet, and it did made urgent measures in this direction. Talks were held with Athens based on Bulgarian-Greek agreements for gas supplies in times of crises, however in such circumstances Greece itself would experience natural gas shortages. Back at that time more hopes were pinned on the deliveries of Azeri gas under the South Gas Corridor project. Bulgaria has signed a contract with Azerbaijan for imports of 1 billion cubic meters of gas from the Shah Deniz gas field but construction of the respective pipeline started only in 2014. The inter-connectors of the Bulgarian gas-transiting system with Turkey and Greece are part of this pipeline but these have not been built yet.

Bulgaria's efforts to overcome its almost exclusive dependence on Russian gas supplies have obvious motivation that remains hidden for the European Commission alone. The online publication EurActiv, close to EC, announced yesterday that in Brussels an adviser at the EC Energy Directorate stated that Bulgaria lacked political will to build gas connectors with neighboring countries as a way to cut Russian gas dependence. There were many options but these were not used because of regulatory obstacles and political obstructions. According to the adviser, the European Commission has already paid enough money for the gas pipeline with Serbia but it is not built because of the local authorities' reluctance. The same was valid of the gas pipeline with Greece. The expert also criticized Bulgaria-Romania and Bulgaria-Turkey relations failing to reach agreement on new gas pipelines. According to the EC official, in this context Bulgaria should not talk about a new Nabucco.

With this situation at hand, the prospects of a viable alternative to Russian gas supplies remain unclear, at least in the short term. In all likelihood however, with a view to the need of building new gas infrastructures and of agreements with neighboring countries, the alternative is feasible not in the short but rather in the medium term, and most probably at a higher price than originally planned.

English Daniela Konstantinova