Bulgaria and Greece hope Russia will join them in the coming months in the formation of a consortium that will construct and operate the proposed Bourgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline linking the Black Sea with the Aegean, Development Minister Akis Tsochadzopoulos said after meeting with Bulgarian Regional Development Minister Valentin Cerovski in Thessaloniki last week (09/04/03). “We are optimistic. President Putin’s recent visit to Bulgaria confirmed Russia’s interest in backing this project,” he said. Tsochadzpoulos said the two countries have already worked with Kazakhstan in securing supplies of oil to be transported with tankers from Novorossisk on the Black Sea east coast to Burgas, and hope Russia will follow suit. The two ministers are due to visit Moscow separately later this month and in May. The project is seen as an alternative route for oil transportation to the Bosporus strait. Separately, Reuters reported a Greek embassy official in Baku, Azerbaijan, as saying that the Public Gas Corporation (DEPA) in June will sign a long-term gas import deal through a planned export pipeline running to Turkey and on through Europe from 2006. Contract details should be hammered out later this month, when officials from DEPA meet with Azeri state oil firm SOCAR, which has said Greece could buy up to 1.5 billion cubic meters of gas from 2006, BP and Norway’s Statoil have undertaken to develop the giant Azeri Shakh Deniz offshore gas field and make a gas pipeline to Turkey profitable. Last year, Turkey and Greece agreed to invest $300 million in building the first pipeline to carry Caspian Sea gas to Europe.
Rift over OKTA refinery acquires new twist
State-run Hellenic Petroleum (ELPE) on Tuesday appointed Giorgios Halvatzoglou to the post of chairman of subsidiary ELPET, majority owner of the OKTA refinery in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and of the Thessaloniki-Skopje oil pipeline, replacing a FYROM government official. The move comes as talks since February between the two sides over FYROM’s claim that OKTA enjoys monopolistic privileges seem to have reached a stalemate. ELPE maintains that FYROM is balking at an agreed extension of the pipeline to Kosovo. FYROM’s Premier Branko Crvenkovski held talks with Development Minister Akis Tsochadzopoulos in Athens last week, which are expected to continue in Skopje later this month.