Bulgaria aspires for an important role in energy, not only in the Balkans but also in Europe. This ambition has emerged following a host of international projects for Russian natural gas supplies via its territory, and more notably owing to the South Stream project. As the Nabucco transcontinental project collapsed, it was meant to deliver Russian gas along the Black Sea bottom to the Bulgarian coast and then on to Austria thus supplying 63 billion cubic meters of gas to Central and Western Europe. This project and the procedures linked to its implementation have elicited a few controversial reactions in Brussels which not only opened a punitive procedure against Sofia for violation of European law but exerted strong pressure on the Bulgarian authorities who finally put freeze on the project.

This has provoked vocal discontent in Moscow and on 1 December 2014 Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the project dead. This came as a major disappointment for theBulgarian authorities who went on pressing for its implementation as potentially profitable for the country.

Despite the public announcement of the project’s end made by the Russian leader, Sofia still cherishes theoretical hopes that not everything is gone based on that it has not received an official document from the Russian side. In this sense, a lot of hope was pinned on Wednesday’s visit to the Russian capital of new European Energy Commissioner Maros Sefkovic who had earlier made a commitment to Bulgarian PM Boyko Borissov to cast some light on the actual plans of Russia and Gazprom.

This time Europe and Bulgaria have been told explicitly that President Putin’s words had not been hollow and that the South Stream project for a gas pipeline has been crossed out of the map of Russian energy projects in Europe. And there is more. Sofia had more or less swallowed the spectacular failure of its ambitions in energy and has even worked out a plan B. Under it the contentious Russian-European South Stream had to be replaced with a Russian pipeline along the bottom of the Black Sea to the Bulgarian coast where a European gas hub for supplies to all potential customers in Europe would be built. Now even this Bulgarian hope was crushed by Gazprom boss Alexey Miller who explicitly told Commissioner Sefkovic that there would be no gas pipeline to Bulgaria; that Russian gas for those willing to consume it would be available via Turkey and if any hub would be built at all, it would be in Turkey.

PM Borissov however is still adamant about this hub with the argument that the bottom of the Black Sea off the Romanian and Bulgarian coasts has natural gas reserves exceeding 200 billion cubic meters and that such quantities are enough for exports to Europe. These claims however are not convincing for either energy experts or Brussels alike. Recent comments from Brussels tried to warn though softly, Sofia that “the European Commission will coordinate the development and implementation of trans-border and trans-European projects supporting diversification of gas supplies to the region.”

This language is too evasive and general, especially for the taste of PM Boyko Borissov, who is a direct person and does not like talking in general. It is obvious, however, that the high-ranking political and economic geostrategic diplomacy has its own priorities not necessarily synchronized with the aspirations and interests of small Bulgaria.

English Daniela Konstantinova