Bulgaria delays again payment for Burgas Alexadroupolis.

By bne IntelliNews March 22, 2011
Vice-president of Russian Transneft and chairman of the supervisory board of Trans-Balkan Pipeline Mikhail Barkov has said quoted by RIA Novosti that Bulgaria has failed again to pay its contribution to Trans-Balkan Pipeline B.V., the project company set to build and run the pipeline for transportation of Russian oil from the Black Sea port of Burgas to the Greek Aegean Sea port of Alexandroupolis, investor.bg reported. According to Barkov, Bulgaria should wire EUR 6mn and has blamed procedural obstacles. We remind that the three countries shareholders in Trans-Balkan Pipeline agreed at their latest general meeting on February 17 in Rome that the project should be continued and Bulgaria should pay its contribution (which was due by December 15, 2010) by March 20 and continue further financing the project. At that time, unnamed representatives from the Bulgarian finance ministry commented for Dnevnik Daily that the country may pay its share after the revised environment assessment is ready. State-run entities of Bulgaria and Greece control 24.5% of the project each, against 51% for Russia. The pipeline construction has been placed under serious scrutiny by the Bulgarian government. The 258-km pipeline is estimated to cost EUR 1.6bn. It will transit 35mn tonnes of oil annually with an option to increase supplies to 50mn tons in the long run.

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