site.btaPM's Chef de Cabinet Borislavova: Bulgaria Negotiating Gas Supplies at Prices Several Times Lower Than Last Agreed with Gazprom

Speaking on the Bulgarian National Television on Sunday, the Prime Minister's Chef de Cabinet, Lena Borislavova, said that Bulgaria needs between "12 and 20 tankers of gas per year in other to guarantee supplies".

Borislavova said that in addition to the already agreed two tankers of liquefied natural gas from the United States whose prices are lower than the price of has from Gazprom, negotiations are already underway on medium- and long-term gas supplies "at prices three and four times lower than the last agreed gas prices with Gazprom". Furthermore, options are being sought for gas supplies from Turkmenistan, Egypt, Turkey and elsewhere, Borislavova said. 

She recalled that Prime Minister Kiril Perkov has agreed receipt by Bulgaria of the full quantities of gas from Azerbaijan even if the gas interconnector with Greece fails to be commissioned on time. Borislavova noted that this disproves the claims by the former incumbents and the former management of Bulgargaz who argued that the full quantities of Azeri gas were impossible to receive without the interconnector. 

"The Azeri gas under this agreement which the former government very obligingly turned down is at a price of 25-26 euros whereas the current price in Europe is 90 euros," Borislavova said. 

She went on to say that the long-term gas agreements will be signed directly with the companies supplying gas without any intermediaries. 

Borislavova also said that at the moment no economic or legal considerations exist to consider nationalization of strategic facilities such as the oil refinery in Burgas, on the Black Sea. 

In a related development, Bulgartransgas Executive Director Vladimir Malinov said that Bulgaria has started talks with Turkey for supplies of has through its territory. On Sunday Malinov and MPs from the parliamentary Energy Committee visited the Chiren gas storage facility. Malinov said, speaking on the Bulgarian National Television, that Bulgartransgas expects to be able to fill up the Chiren storage facility by the autumn. He said at the moment the facility has 113 million cu m of gas, which is 21% of its capacity. In Malinov's words, this is a normal volume for this time of the year. Compared to the same time last year, Chiren now has 6% more gas. Some one million cubic metres of gas are fed to the facility daily, Malinov said. 

Malinov said that Bulgaria is not going to suspend the transiting via its territory of Russian gas supplies to Serbia and Hungary.

In her TV appearance on Sunday Borislavova offered the same assurance, saying that Bulgaria is a country which honours its commitments under international agreements. She said the transit of gas will continue except if force majeure occurs. 

Commenting on the package of anti-inflationary measures expected to be announced shortly, Borislavova said the measures will be felt by all people in this country. She said the procedure for exempting from excise duty electricity and gas is already underway and is expected to take more than four weeks. Also underway is a procedure for increasing the VAT registration threshold to 100,000 leva, she said. At the moment the threshold is 50,000 leva.