An important step towards completing the gas connection with Turkey was made last week during the visit of Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Boyko Borissov to Ankara where the two countries signed a mutual declaration for the accelerated construction of the gas interconnector.
For years the construction of this link has been agreed on paper, but no Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has personally committed himself to set the project in motion, for which I thank him, said Mr. Borissov. Such declarations, though, have been often heard in the past, but in order to have something real, in the next two months Sofia and Ankara will have to clarify exactly where the route of the faciulity will pass through, to give it a strategic status for Bulgaria and Turkey, without prior conditions and calculations what gas will be delivered through it and at what price. This is what will not be easy.
Despite our good political and economic relations with Ankara, our southeastern neighbours will hardly likely be inclined to participate in building a tube to be used only in rare gas crises. As a matter of fact this will be a facility with a length of about 80 km (linking Eastern Thrace to the region of Haskovo in Bulgaria) and a capacity of 1 to 3 billion cubic meters of gas annually.
We will do what is necessary so that Bulgaria is not worried about its gas supplies, said Mr. Erdogan, but what did he actually mean? Back in the autumn of 2010, the Bulgarian Prime Minister and his Turkish counterpart discussed the option of the bilateral gas interconnection becoming part of the Nabucco pipeline in order for the project to be eligible for EU funding. Subsequently, however, they decided not to link the two projects while later Ankara announced that it is no longer a full supporter of Nabucco and it would give a higher priority to its Trans Anadolu ( TANAP) pipeline.
Such a move is fully consistent with the ambitions of Turkey to transform itself from a natural gas transit country into a major player in the European market, especially following a political agreement with Baku for Azeri gas supplies from the Shah Deniz deposit field. And it is quite logical that Ankara is now seeking customers for the supply of natural gas starting from Bulgaria. Of course, for Sofia this would also be beneficial as long as it manages to get gas at a lower price than what the Russian company Gazprom is selling. But Bulgaria’s interconnector with Turkey is a really strategically important project, primarily because it is the shortest path for the state to complete the deal reached between its government and Azerbaijan for the supply of 1 billion cubic metres of natural gas annually.
On the other hand, it is now far more reasonable to expect natural gas from Baku to first come through the connection facility with Greece, whose construction should start this year. There is already a contractor to prepare the technical design, assessment of the environmental impact and detailed development plan. According to the forecast of the Bulgarian Energy Holding the facility will become operational in mid 2014. After its launch, it will be able to supply gas from Algeria and to this end preliminary discussions on interstate level have already being conducted .
