Russ Oil-Gas

04-24-2009 - Bulgaria News - A week ago Bulgaria has requested from Russia a new, more profitable for Bulgaria contract with “Gazprom” for the supplies of natural gas. This announce the minister of energy Peter Dimitrov at the opening of the business forum within the summit held in Sofia, cited by darik.net. The new contract should include more profitable for Bulgaria transit taxes and should secure alternative route in case of crisis like the one in January, said Dimitrov. He stressed that the agreement should contain state guarantees from Russia in order to be clear who takes the responsibility for the payment of compensations if there is suspension of the supplies. The current contract between “Bulgargaz” and the Russian giant expired in 2010. According to Dimitrov the Bulgarian claims will be reviewed during the visit of PM Stanishev in Moscow next week. “Bulgaria suffered over half billion levs losses. For me it is interesting today to hear according to you who should be asked for these compensations. I believe it is good to include in the new contracts the supply to be guaranteed with alternative route from the supplier itself”, said also the energy minister. There were no problems during the crisis Bulgaria to receive gas from Turkey and Greece, said Peter Dimitrov and added that a very important Bulgarian demand was for the transparency of the contracts. The representative of “Gazprom at the business forum Stanislav Tsigankov explained that the Russian side didn’t intend to sign a new gas supply contract with “Bulgargaz” since the term of the current agreement hadn’t expired. The manager of “Bulgargaz” claimed that he was not interested in the comments of “Gazprom” because the Bulgarian supplier had already claimed interest in the signing of a new contract with “Gazprom”. Tsigankov said also that “Gazrpom” was ready to sign with “Bulgargaz” a framework agreement for the South stream project during the visit of the Bulgarian PM in Moscow in the beginning of next week.