Bulgaria wants an equal share in planned oil pipeline
SOFIA (Reuters) – Bulgaria’s government said yesterday it would insist on having an equal stake in a joint company with Greece and Russia, to be set up to manage a new 700 million euro ($618 million) trans-Balkan oil pipeline. The project has been in deadlock for nearly seven years, mainly because Bulgaria and Greece have, so far, failed to agree over their stakes in the future consortium to manage the 256-km (159-mile) underground pipeline carrying Russian oil. «Bulgaria will insist that a company among the governments of the three countries be set up and registered in a fourth country. The three should have equivalent stakes,» Deputy Prime Minister Kostadin Paskalev told reporters. He said this would be Bulgaria’s position in the next round of negotiations due next week when Greek Cabinet officials are expected in Sofia. The project envisages carrying 35 million tons of crude per year (700,000 barrels per day) from the Russian port of Novorossiisk by tanker to Bulgarian Black Sea port of Bourgas, where the underground pipeline will transfer the oil to Alexandroupolis in northeastern Greece. Last month, Deputy Construction Minister Hasan Hasan said Bulgaria had received Russia’s backing in its demand for equal equity in the project of 33.3 percent for each country. Hasan said the main problem was that Greece had wanted a smaller stake for Bulgaria. Officials said that Greece’s main argument was that Bulgaria lacked money to back a bigger stake in the project. The Greeks had forecast that Sofia and Athens would solve the dispute by early March, but no progress has yet been reported. Hasan said last month that seven companies, including Bulgaria’s biggest oil refinery LUKOIL Neftochim Bourgas, majority owned by Russia’s LUKOIL, and local gas supplier Overgas, linked to Russia’s giant Gazprom, were ready to take part in the project and provide funding. In return, they expected to take ownership of Bulgaria’s stake in the future joint company. But on Thursday, Paskalev said Bulgaria’s stake would be fully state-owned and the government could decide to sell part of it through the stock exchange. Paskalev also said that the statutes of the new company should allow each of the three countries to veto decisions that are not in their best interests.
