Bulgaria Set to Build Gas Link with Turkey

Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan (R) and his Bulgarian counterpart Boyko Borisov (L) met on Tuesday. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria will build a cross-border gas interconnector with its neighbor Turkey, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has announced.

"That has been discussed for years, it has now become possible thanks to the political will of the Turkish Prime Minister," Borisov commented after meeting his Turkish counterpart in Ankara.

Bulgaria moved to link its natural gas grid to that of its neighbors after the January 2009 gas war between Russia and Ukraine, which cut off the Russian gas supplies to Bulgaria for full three weeks leaving it without natural gas in the middle of the winter. The gas crisis of 2009 exposed Bulgaria's almost 100% dependence on Russian natural gas.

In February 2011, the European Council decided that each EU member state should have at least two sources of natural gas and electricity by 2014 in order to avoid a repetition of the Russian-Ukrainian gas crisis.

On Thursday, Bulgaria and Turkey held the first sitting of their high-level cooperation council.

Bilateral cooperation agreements in the fields of economy, transportation, tourism, culture, environment, the defense industry and broadcasting were expected to be signed after the meeting.

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