Kyiv Weekly: South Stream may run dry
A gas deposit recently discovered on the maritime border between Romania and Bulgaria may put to rest an ambitious project of Russia
On August 29 the Bulgarian publicly-owned company EAD and Russia’s Gazprom signed an agreement on partnership in the construction of the South Stream gas pipeline bypassing Ukraine. In exchange for partnership Bulgaria received an 11% discount on imported Russian gas
Reporting on the deal Gazprom’s representatives addressed their messages to Ukraine once again stressing that gas discounts are granted only to those countries that join efforts in the implementation of projects critical for Gazprom. Until Ukraine’s cedes its gas pipeline grid to Russian companies, Moscow refuses to include Kyiv on the list of such partners even despite the fact that Ukraine is Gazprom’s second largest European client following Germany.
Such blatant blackmail addressed to official Kyiv disturbs Gazprom’s smaller EU clients as they understand perfectly well that Gazprom may have the same attitude towards them if not worse. Since September 2012 Bulgaria has been trying to unsaddle the wave of such suspicions – regardless of traditionally pessimistic assessments that the Bulgarian shelf is not rich in natural gas, Sofia managed to achieve sensational success in this direction over the past few months. Following in the footsteps of Romania, which stated in 2010 that it would be able to suspend the import of Russian gas by 2015 thanks to drilling on its shelf, officials in Sofia began declaring that their country would also completely suspend the import of Russian gas by 2017– 2018. MORE