Trans-Balkan Pipeline cancels board meeting
MOSCOW. Dec 13 (Interfax) - A meeting scheduled for December 14 in Amsterdam of Trans-Balkan Pipeline B.V. (TBP), the operator of the Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline project, will not take place, Igor Dyomin, spokesman for Russia's Transneft , one of the project participants, told Interfax.
"We have received the position of our Bulgarian partners. It wasn't an official notification, the official one was sent to the Foreign Ministry. As this is about severing an intergovernmental agreement, it creates a new situation and it doesn't make sense to hold the board meeting. We await instructions from the government as to our next action," Dyomin said.
Those actions could include liquidating the consortium, freezing the project or doing it without the Bulgarian side's involvement, he said.
Greece also suggested not holding the board meeting, Dyomin said.
Bulgaria said last week that it intended to dissolve the 2007 agreement signed with Russia and Turkey to build the pipeline.
The Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline, which is to be laid through Greece and Bulgaria, will bypass the congested Bosporus and Dardanelles straits. It will be 300 kilometers in length and have the capacity to transport 35 million tonnes of crude per year with the opportunity to increase that to 50 million tonnes. Construction was estimated to cost around 1 billion euros.
The founders of Trans-Balkan Pipeline B.V. are Russia's TK-BA with 51%, Bulgaria's Project Company Burgas-Alexandroupolis BG with 24.5%, Helle C.A. - Traki C.A. of Greece with 23.5%, and the Greek government with 1%. The founders of TK-BA were Russian oil pipeline company Transneft with 33.34%, Gazprom Neft with 33.33%, and Rosneft , also with 33.33%.
The meeting on December 14 was due to discuss Bulgaria's funding of the project. At the last board meeting in the summer, Bulgaria promised to repay its debt and pay its dues to the project following approval of the environmental impact study. The Bulgarian Environment Ministry approved the environmental impact study for the Burgas-Alexandroupolis project on November 3.
Greece plans to continue providing funding for the project after Bulgaria meets its financial obligations, he said.
The environmental impact study's approval was postponed on various occasions. Initially it was expected to be approved in February 2011. This was later extended to March 28 and then for a further two months. The Bulgarian Environment Ministry in June sent the statement back for further work until August 23. Bulgaria approved a request from TBP to extend the deadline for the statement to September 30. Bulgaria said more than once that the project was a risk to the environment and not in its benefit. Bulgaria owed $7.3 million on the project at the beginning of 2011.
Bulgaria's then prime minister, Stanislav Stanishev, said last year that the country faced a possible break fee of EUR 500 million if it pulled out of the pipeline project.