Bulgaria Braces for Larger Role Amidst Ukraine Crisis
The crisis in Ukraine has set numerous countries across Europe in motion, albeit in different directions, as national priorities seem to be shaping the Union’s political agenda, with a particular emphasis on energy security. Bulgaria for example has a lot at stake and is eager to exploit opportunities during these critical moments.
Former Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov, who is also head of the country's centre-left party, recently made an emphatic speech on the need for Sofia to refute any scenarios of 'freezing" the South Stream natural gas pipeline project. He added that his country has not relinquished any rights to the European Commissions's Directorate-General for Energy and that Bulgaria and other small EU countries should not become victims of antagonisms between the 'East and West' or the future of Ukraine. Said statements were well-received by large stratums of the public and stakeholders, as it seems South Stream pipeline will become one of the major 'national themes' of the country in terms of energy security strategy and also foreign policy, placing Bulgaria in between the so-called East and West.
In the meantime, Bulgaria's Ministry of Energy and Economy made new claims that the South Stream project should go on as envisaged, replying to Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger comments that the EU will delay the establishment of the pipeline route. Bulgarian authorities officially claimed that the project is of "national priority and importance" signalling a likely clash with Brussels, at a moment when the majority of the Balkan states from where the route is scheduled to pass have reached the same assumptions as Sofia.
Nevertheless, the Bulgarian strategy is not exclusively related to pushing forward a plan that is tied to Gazprom, but rather aims to make the country a hub for a variety of different sources of gas. For that purpose, the Bulgarian government also announced that a team of experts from the Ministry of Energy will convene with their counterparts in Turkey in order to plan for an additional interconnector between the two countries. This planned pipeline will be 114km in length and could be completed in two years. The main aim would be to have a strong linkage with the prospective Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) which will bring additional amounts of Azeri gas from the giant Shah Deniz field offshore Baku.
Concurrently, mid-2014 will see construction start for the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB), which aims to link the Greek transmission system's additional volumes coming from Azerbaijan via the Trans-Adriatic pipeline (TAP). Effectively, Bulgaria shows that it wants to have both pieces of the pie and interlink its energy security interests with a number of strong energy players.
Furthermore, in yet another more interesting initiative, incumbent Bulgaria President Rosen Plevneliev proclaimed that the EU markets should be supplied by Qatar with additional LNG-transferred gas amounts. A new supply route from South to North could couple the established East to West gas transfer paths. In a recent visit to Qatar, Plevneliev said that the ports of Greece could be the staging ground for the imports of Qatari gas, which thereafter could flow from the Bulgarian 'hub' towards Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland ending up in the Baltic states. The IGB pipeline, which was noted previously, would be the first step towards this realization, along with the intention of Bulgaria to double its natural gas storage facilities and the use of other interconnectors with its neighbouring countries.
Overall Bulgaria, showcases an energy security model that will occupy the policy-making of a large number of EU states that take a neutral stance between the brinkmanship of global players in the Ukrainian crisis. That is the ability of absorbing the tensions by amalgamating different projects, whilst at the same time elevating one's regional status in terms of energy supply, preferably by taking the role of the hub from where all corporate plans will have to go through before reaching the terminal markets.