First American Liquefied Gas for Bulgaria

Bulgaria is starting to consume US liquefied gas, which is a first step towards diversifying supplies and reducing dependence on imports of Russian natural gas only. On Thursday evening, at the Greek LNG Revituse, the first tanker arrived with 90 million cubic meters of raw material for Bulgargaz, the unloading of which will start today,  June 1st. This was announced at a press conference on Friday by Minister of Energy Temenujka Petkova and the bosses of the state-owned companies Bulgargas Nikolay Pavlov and Bulgartransgaz Vladimir Malinov.

The supplier of the raw material is the Dutch company Colmar, which was among the participants in the first auction in Bulgargaz auction for alternatives to Gazprom deliveries of 144 million cubic meters of gas. It was won by the Greek DEPA and it was announced that the prices achieved were lower than those of Russian gas, but it was not stated what they were. The third candidate was the Bulgarian gas supplier "Dexia".

However, Colmar had suggested to Bulgargas to buy other quantities at prices below the DEPA and that was accepted by the gas company. According to Mediapool, such a bid was also made by Dexia, and since the tariffs were more favorable than the gas-oil companies, and the state gas supplier was not obliged to conduct supply tenders, it was decided to use the competitive services.

Now the gas arrivals are for the second quarter, the next "Colmar" will provide another 50 million cubic meters, Minister Temenujka Petkova explained.

"Prices are competitive and lower than those of the current supplier. I think this is a very serious step forward towards the liberalization of the natural gas market in Bulgaria and a very clear sign that the government is working very diversely towards...