Bulgaria and Azerbaijan will participate in a project for transportation of Azeri compressed natural gas to Bulgaria via Georgia and across the Black Sea. This provided for by a Memorandum of Energy Cooperation between Bulgaria's Economy, Energy and Tourism Ministry and Azerbaijan's Industry and Energy Ministry and a Memorandum of Cooperation between Bulgaria's state-owned Bulgartransgaz and the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic (SOCAR), signed here Friday during a one-day working visit to Sofia by Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev.
Speaking at a joint news conference with his guest, Bulgarian President Georgi Purvanov said that the signing of the documents finalized several years of efforts and that they lend a new quality to bilateral relations. "The agreements signed create new possibilities for diversification of natural gas supply not only to Bulgaria but to Southeastern Europe at large," he noted.
As agreed in advance, Azerbaijan will start delivering 1,000 million c m of natural gas to Bulgaria once the gas stretch of the Turkey-Greece-Italy (TGI) pipeline is completed.