Russian gas giant Gazprom has offered to increase its transit of natural gas through Bulgaria to Serbia and Greece and will keep its current transit contract with Bulgaria unchanged, officials said yesterday. Sofia and Moscow have been warily circling each other since last month, when Bulgaria rejected a demand by Gazprom to change its transit contract because it said it would raise the price it pays for gas. But ministry spokeswoman Elena Yotova said they agreed to keep the pact unchanged after Energy Minister Rumen Ovcharov met with his Russian counterpart Viktor Khristenko and Gazprom officials in Moscow yesterday. «There will be no change in the contract for the transit of gas through Bulgaria through 2010,» she said.
Bulgaria's Energy Ministry added Russia had offered to extend the contract by 10 years and talks for a «strategic partnership» in the energy sector after 2010 would be launched soon. «Gazprom's officials have offered an increase of gas transits through Bulgaria, which includes the building of a new pipeline to Serbia and the capacity expansion of an existing one to Greece,» it said in a statement.
Bulgarian gas monopoly Bulgargaz controls a 2,645-kilometer pipeline network with a total capacity of 18.7 billion cubic meters (bcm). It transported 15.5 bcm of Russian gas to Turkey, Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia last year.
In December 2004 Bulgargaz signed a contract with Gazprom to increase the transit supply to Greece by 50 percent through 2010. The Russian gas transits to Greece stood at 2.4 bcm last year, up 9.7 percent, data from Bulgargaz showed.
Gazprom reduced supplies to Serbia last month due to freezing weather and transport problems but later restored the flow. It has expressed interest in projects such as building a 250-kilometer pipeline that should link southern Serbian town of Nis to Bulgarian town of Dupnitsa.
Bulgaria gas monopoly Bulgargaz has said it is ready to build the 107 kilometer link on its territory, which it estimates will cost 60-70 million euros, for two years.
Gazprom now pays transit fees to Bulgaria in the form of gas now set at around $83 per thousand cubic meters, compared with the $257 Bulgaria pays for supply not covered by that contract.