Bulgaria's ruling GERB leader Boyko Borissov said the country is negotiating with US investors to expand a branch of the TurkStream gas pipeline, the only pipeline currently transporting Russian gas to Central Europe, almost entirely supplied by Gazprom.
"There is no sale of the pipeline, but a call for investment and an expansion of the pipeline's capacity," said Mr. Borissov.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Rossen Zhelyazkov also confirmed that negotiations with a US speculative fund are ongoing but noted that the government is not ready to disclose further details.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that billionaire Paul Singer's Elliott Management investment fund was negotiating to buy back a stake in the TurkStream pipeline section passing through Bulgaria.
Although the gas pipeline section passing through Turkey and Bulgaria is currently the only pipeline Gazprom can use to access the European market, according to Euractiv, the section of the pipeline is governed by Bulgarian law as a exclusive national asset and cannot be sold.
Bulgaria earns more than $300 million a year from the transit of Russian gas to Serbia and Hungary.
Speaking in an interview with Euractiv, ruslan Stefanov, CEO of the Center for Democratic Studies (CSD), warned that if the EU does not have an official ban on Russian gas, such an agreement would go against Europe's strategic interests.
"An investment from the US is only meaningful when the EU imposes sanctions on Russian gas. At that time, expanding the gas infrastructure in Bulgaria could help increase imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), including US LNG, into Central Europe," said Stefanov.
He warned that if no sanctions are imposed, the investment would invisibly support the expansion of the Russian gas transit route, going against the EU's climate and energy security goals, as well as the European Commission's commitment to eliminate Russian gas before 2027.
Stefanov said that Bulgaria's negotiation with US investors took place in the context of many rumors in the media about high -level contacts between the United States and Russia, including the ability to revive the Nord Stream project (Northern Flow). According to him, Turkstream involvement in the initiative is unlikely, because it can directly threaten the strategic interests of both the US and the EU.
According to data from CSD, the Russian state budget earns more than 10 billion USD per year from oil and gas sales in Central and Eastern Europe.
