Bulgaria Seeks Turkish Connection to Nabucco Project

Bulgaria has proposed that a planned interconnection between that country and Turkey should form a part of the Nabucco West pipeline, the Bulgarian Prime Minister has said.

The proposal was made at a meeting of Nabucco shareholders in Vienna yesterday, where EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger met with government officials from Nabucco route countries. During the meeting, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov said that Bulgaria wished for the Turkish interconnector to form part of the final Nabucco project in order to encourage real diversification of supply.

"We want real diversification," Bulgarian media group bTV reported the Prime Minister as saying. "Nabucco is vital for the countries that have gathered here. It's a project whose dimensions have not only regional but European significance."

If the Nabucco consortium could not or would not approve the connection, Bulgaria would seek to finance the €50 million interconnector itself, to use for its own emergency supply needs, the Sofia news agency reported him as saying.

Speaking following the meeting yesterday, Bulgarian Minister for Energy Delian Dobrev said that the interconnector would be worth more to the country than what it costs to construct.

"The importance of the project is much more than the money invested," the Focus Information Agency reports him as saying. "Funds for it will be surely found. We can finance the Bulgarian part with our own funds from Bulgartransgaz."