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Main page > Comments > Fuel & Energy > Gazprom increases its pressure on Bulgaria, Ukraine
Gazprom increases its pressure on Bulgaria, Ukraine
Moscow has renewed pressure on Sofia to stop stalling in deciding on the South Stream project or Gazprom will replace Bulgaria with Romania as the primary transit hub of the gas pipeline. On 13 October, Alexei Miller, the chief executive at Russian gas giant Gazprom, signed a memorandum of understanding with Romania's Transgas to study the feasibility of South Stream in Romania.
Gazprom and Transgaz will sign an intergovernmental agreement of cooperation on South Stream in early 2011 "provided the results of these feasibility studies are positive." South Stream would branch into two pipelines -- one to Greece and the other through the Balkans -- after it passes through the Turkish waters of the Black Sea.
Hardly had the ink dried on Gazprom’s memorandum with Transgaz when Miller visited Sofia to discuss South Stream with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov. Russia’s pressure on Bulgaria appears to be paying off and both sides agreed to start a joint venture next month to build the Bulgarian part of South Stream. "We have achieved significant progress," Miller told reporters after meeting with Borisov on 15 October. "We agreed to speed up the set up of a joint venture...I think we can establish it in November. We also agree to sign next week an agreement to launch a feasibility study for the Bulgarian part," he said. Miller reiterated that South Stream, which aims to ship up to 63 billion cubic meters of Russian gas per year, will have its first gas shipments to south Europe at the end of 2015.
“Gazprom is trying to use Romania as an instrument of influence on Bulgaria,” Konstantin Simonov, director of the independent National Energy Security Fund in Moscow, told New Europe by phone on 15 October. “Now the question is what will be the route of South Stream. Will it go through Bulgaria or through Romania?”
Simonov opined that South Stream is also an instrument of pressure on Ukraine. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin plans to meet his Ukrainian counterpart Mykola Azarov in Kiev on 27 October. “Now we see a very important phase in our negotiations with Ukraine about the future of the gas pipeline system. If Ukraine will agree with, for example, merging of Gazprom and Naftogaz or if Ukraine will agree on consortium between Russian, Ukrainian, for example, German companies, which will be an operator of Ukrainian gas pipeline system maybe in this case there will be no need to build South Stream,” Simonov said. But Moscow needs the agreement with Sofia to show Kiev that South Stream, which would bypass Ukraine and send natural gas supplies from Russia directly to Bulgaria, is a realistic project and a credible threat to circumvent Ukraine.
Russia boost the credibility of South Stream on 9 October in St Petersburg where Putin and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi publicly agreed to allow Wintershall, a unit of Germany’s BASF, to join South Stream, which is controlled by Gazprom and Italy's ENI. French power company EDF also holds a stake. “Now we have already Italian company in this project, a company from France, EDF, and if it will be Wintershall, it’s not only Russian-Italian project, it’s also a European project,” Simonov said.
Author: Kostis Geropoulos
New Europe, 17 October 2010
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