Bulgaria looking to revive South Stream, Russia to choose best option
MOSCOW. March 10 (Interfax) - Southern European countries need gas, and active talks are being held with them regarding projects to supply Russian gas, Deputy Russian Energy Minister Yury Sentyurin told reporters.
"We have several projects in operation. Active talks are being held with southern European states. Southern Europe and Southeastern Europe also obviously need gas. By what route it will go there specifically [...] I think, that it is not necessary to run forward, it is necessary to wait until the talks are completed. Because the talks, in my view, are founded on economic feasibility and technical reality," he said.
"Everything is limited by the cost of these gas pipeline systems. I recall that we witnessed many announcements, but unimplemented projects [...] Specialists are calculating all the possibilities, holding talks, which conditions are being proposed by our Greek partners...," he said.
"But we have large consumers. The European market demonstrated a good performance for Gazprom. The volume of gas exports on the European market seriously rose in 2015. This concerns growth that amounted to more than 20%," he said.
Answering a question about whether the proposed gas pipeline will go across Bulgarian territory, the deputy minister said: "I don't know. I know that our Bulgarian partners are actively raising the issue of resuming talks on South Stream. In any case such information came to us at the ministry."
"And how it will be in practice, this is difficult for me to say, because there are competition conditions, which are offered by the parities. Of course, the choice will be in favor of those who offer the most interesting terms for the implementation of this project," he said.