You're reading: Bulgaria still hopes South Stream project will be carried out

MOSCOW - Bulgaria still hopes the South Stream gas pipeline project will be carried out, but at any rate the situation with the project should not affect bilateral elations with Russia.

“For us there are certain interests the South Stream project happening. We have shown that Bulgaria is a dependable partner for Russia where the transit of gas from Russia to Europe is concerned,” Bulgarian Minister of Economy Bozhidar Lukarski, who is in Moscow, told Interfax.

But he said the South Stream story “must in no way affect trade and economic relations between the two countries.”

Bulgaria receives nearly all its gas from Russia via Ukraine.

Russia said in December 2014 that it had closed the project to build South Stream across the Black Sea bed and via Bulgaria to deliver gas to the Balkan countries, Hungary, Austria and Italy. It was decided instead to build a pipeline to Turkey and create a gas hub on the Turkish-Greek border for customers in southeast Europe.

Russia’s Gazprom blamed Bulgaria for disrupting the project. “The decision was made within the framework of Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’s visit to Turkey, during his negotiations with Turkish President Erdogan,” Gazprom chief Alexei Miller has said.

“On this very day, a pipe-laying ship put out to the Black Sea to start the pipe laying operations. But how can these operations be carried out if Bulgaria has not given permission to construction in its territorial waters, its exclusive economic zone, and has not given permission for construction on the ground? The ship simply put out to sea. And there is no permission. It should be noted that there is no permission precisely for construction. And it should be said that these decisions fully rest with the Bulgarian side. It should not pass the buck to the European Commission,” he said.

A pipe-laying fleet owned by Italy’s Saipem is still docked at a Bulgarian port, and Gazprom recently lifted the suspension of work to lay pipes along the Black Sea bed. Oleg Aksyutin a member of the Gazprom executive board, said recently that the offshore installation of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, two-thirds of which will correspond to the South Stream route, would begin in the Black Sea shallow-water section in the first ten days of June. But Turkey has still not given the all-clear to conduct surveying in its waters, let alone build the pipeline.