“This deal is extremely important for Bulgaria after the January crisis, as it opens possibilities for Bulgaria to import liquefied and compressed gas from Egypt,” Dimitrov said.
Bulgaria was among the hardest hit by a Russia-Ukraine price row that slashed Russian natural gas supplies to European buyers in the middle of winter.
Following the crisis, the nation, which is almost totally needy on Russian gas deliveries through Ukraine for its consumption, has hunted ways to branch out its supplies. Dimitrov said that Egyptian gas could be brought to Bulgaria through existing or new terminals in Greece and Turkey, but said concrete terms on quantities; timelines and routes had yet to be negotiated.
Fahmy had said during a visit to Sofia earlier in 2009 that Egypt could produce around one billion cubic meters of gas to Bulgaria annually from 2011-2012.
Bulgaria reached an agreement to connect its gas transportation network to that of neighboring Greece, allowing it to get gas from terminals on Greece’s Aegean coast and from the Turkey-Greece-Italy pipeline.
Bulgaria has also executed an agreement in principle to construct a new LNG terminal on Greek territory to which Bulgaria could have access to obtain gas from third countries.
