Bulgaria has suspended works on South Stream pipeline construction and would continue them depending on future consultations with the European Commission, country's Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski said here on Sunday.
Oresharski made the statement after talks with visiting U.S. senators John McCain, Ron Johnson and Christopher Murphy.
"We have an inquiry from the European Commission, and on this occasion the activities on the project were stopped," Oresharski said.
The course of further works would depend on the consultations with Brussels, which would be held in the future, Oresharski said.
In turn, McCain said he would like to see less Russian involvement in issues concerning the South Stream.
Last October, Oresharski and Alexey Miller, chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee, announced the formal start of construction of the South Stream gas pipeline on Bulgarian territory.
After five hours of talks, the officials ordered workers to weld the first two pipes near the village of Rasovo, some 143 km north of Sofia, where one of the three compressor stations in Bulgaria will be located.
However, no construction activities of the project were carried out on the Bulgarian territory since then.
The project, that will transport Russian gas to Southern and Central Europe bypassing Ukraine, will be laid across the bottom of the Black Sea from the Russian coast to Bulgaria. The main pipe length will be 540 km in the Balkan country and with design capacity of 63 billion cubic meters of gas per year.
http://www.neurope.eu/article/bulgaria-suspends-south-stream-gas-pipeline-construction-pm