Bulgaria signals historic shift from Russian gas

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is prompting Bulgaria to think the unthinkable — and break up with Russian natural gas.

For decades, Bulgaria’s energy policy has been shaped under pressure from Russian energy companies, like the state-owned natural gas producer Gazprom and the petroleum giant Lukoil.

But in a potentially historic move that could redraw the European energy map, the country’s Deputy Prime Minister Asen Vassilev said that when Bulgaria’s 10-year deal with Gazprom expires at the end of 2022, Sofia will look elsewhere to meet its natural gas needs.

“In this situation, there cannot be talks with Gazprom,” Vassilev told Bulgarian National Radio. “There are alternatives.”

Vassilev’s announcement comes just months before the planned completion of a pipeline linking Bulgaria’s network with Greece — a project that U.S. and European diplomats have long suspected Moscow was pushing Sofia to stop. Bulgaria has some of the deepest ties to Moscow of any country in the European Union but its new government, which took power in December, is trying to chart a more unambiguously pro-Western trajectory

The pipeline — known as the Greece-Bulgaria interconnector — would introduce flexibility into the southeastern European gas market, potentially allowing countries in the region to diversify away from Russian gas and improving connections between the EU and Middle Eastern and Central Asian gas producers.

According to Bulgarian Energy Minister Alexander Nikolov, the project is expected to allow the country to ramp up its gas capacity from three to five billion cubic meters of gas imports per year and provide Sofia with a link to a planned LNG terminal scheduled to become operational in the Greek city of Alexandroupolis in 2023.

Sofia will also seek to increase imports from Azerbaijan, which already supplies Bulgaria with 1 billion cubic meters of gas per year. The deputy prime minister said that costs could be kept in check if a common EU gas supply agreement was signed with Baku, arguing that “when there are larger volumes, better prices can be achieved.”

LNG imports are likely to result in more expensive gas for Bulgaria, but Vassilev said the switch had become an imperative as a result of the war in Ukraine.

“This is not just a Bulgarian position: this is a common European strategy,” he said, invoking the recent agreement made by EU leaders in Versailles to “phase out our dependency on Russian gas, oil and coal imports as soon as possible.”