Energy and economy minister Roumen Ovcharov met his Russian counterpart Viktor Hristenko and top managers of Russia’s gas major Gazprom in Moscow yesterday. The talks were focused on long-term natural gas transits through Bulgaria, according to Ovcharov, as the Russian side agreed not to push for amendments to the current contract expiring in 2010 and offered a new long-term deal over the period of 2011-2020.
The new arrangement will apparently remove the barter terms in the current transit contract allowing Bulgaria’s state-owned gas utility Bulgargaz to cover around 40% of the local supplies at a fixed input price of US$83 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas, while paying the other part at market rates (currently calculated at US$257). Gazprom also offered investments in expanding the transit capacity of the pipeline to Greece and building a high-pressured extension to Serbia that would secure Bulgargaz higher transit volumes.
The prospects for further transit expansion to Italy were reportedly deemed as financially inappropriate. The talks also tackled the project for building a pipeline for transit of Russian oil from the port of Bourgas to the Greek port of Alexandroupolis and the Russian bid in the tender for building a nuclear plant in Belene where Gazprom has interests through related entities. The oil pipeline initiative will be further debated in March while the talks on Belene practically coincided with the opening of the candidates’ bids in Sofia (more details are given in the corporate section).
Minister Ovcharov also had a short meeting with the management of Russia’s electricity company RAO UES yesterday but no concrete arrangements were mentioned. RAO UES has filed the best bids in the privatization tenders for the thermo-power plants in Varna and Rousse but has already left the race for the bigger one in Varna and is still expected to decide on the plant in Rousse.