Several days ago Russia again stopped its gas supplies to Ukraine, as it happened back in 2009, because Ukraine failed to pay a deposit. In return Ukraine banned the imports of Russian gas. However, Russia currently transits gas to the Central and Southeast Europe through Ukrainian territory. The President of Russian Gazprom Alexey Miller warned that Kiev’s refusal to buy Russian gas put the transit of that fuel to Europe at serious risk. However, Bulgaria, just like in 2009, is not prepared for such a scenario, although the country faced a series of energy problems back then and its central heating plants switched to coal two months after the start of the crisis. Now the authorities are trying to ease the tension stating that there are currently two gas pipelines in Ukraine: the one that transits gas to Europe and Bulgaria and a second one that supplies Ukraine with Russian gas. Analysts presume that Russia does not intend to reduce the gas supplies to Southeast Europe, because such deliveries bring steady money flow to the company which currently faces problems with the low prices of petrol. Bulgaria’s Energy Minister Temenuzhka Petkova calmed Bulgarian citizens down saying that the ministry’s analyses showed that currently there was no risk over the working regime of the national gas-transferring network.

However, Premier Borissov,  who is on official visit to China, is concerned about the lower pressure in the gas pipeline after the Russian sanction. Minister Petkova said on that occasion that the fluctuation in the gas pressure was something normal and that the pressure corresponded with the agreement between Russia and Bulgaria.

Although Bulgaria’s gas storage facility in Chiren is full almost to its maximum capacity and contains some 450 million cubic meters of gas, it can satisfy Bulgaria’s gas needs for a maximum of 100 odd days. The country’s gas consumption during the winter months varies between 8 and 10 million cubic meters per day. The truth is that despite the gas crisis in 2009 and the planned energy strategies, the progress in that field is meager. The authorities are talking about all types of gas pipeline projects and gas hubs, but little has been done on the construction of the gas interconnections with neighboring countries. In fact, several days ago the European Commission urged Bulgaria to speed up the construction of the trans-border gas pipelines financed with money from the EU budget. The Spokesperson of the European Commission for Climate Action and Energy Anna-Kaisa Itkonen announced that EC President Jean-Claude Juncker has been working vigorously on the modernization of the gas infrastructure of Central and Southeast Europe, so that each country can have in the future at least three different sources of gas. So far Bulgaria has only one source of gas supply- it imports Russian gas through Ukraine, just like in 2009, when the country was short of gas during the Ukrainian gas crisis.