Bulgaria and Greece are reviving the “dirty” project, which they previously refused to implement with Russia
Athens and Sofia are considering reviving a crude oil pipeline project between the Greek port of Alexandroupolis on the Aegean Sea and the Bulgarian port of Burgas on the Black Sea.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced this on February 16 after a meeting with Bulgarian President Rumen Radev, who arrived in Athens on an official visit, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
The Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline was the idea of Russian oil companies; in 2007, a Russian-Bulgarian-Greek consortium for its construction was created, but in 2011, the implementation of the project was disrupted by Bulgaria.
But if earlier the project provided benefits for Bulgaria as a buyer and transitor of Russian oil, which was to be delivered by sea from Novorossiysk to Burgas, and after pumping to Alexandroupolis sold on the world market, now Greece will receive the main benefits from the oil pipeline if it is built.
Mitsotakis stressed that the pipeline would offer Bulgaria alternative sources of supply and a “safer, faster and cheaper” way to transport oil once tankers bypass the now congested Bosporus Strait. Actually, it was precisely for the purpose of bypassing the Turkish straits that Russian designers created the project for this oil pipeline.
“The Alexandroupolis-Burgas oil pipeline is of strategic importance for Bulgaria, since it will provide the opportunity for real diversification and supply of our refinery in Burgas with non-Russian oil,” Radev said, in turn.
At the end of 2011, the Bulgarian authorities withdrew from the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline project under the pretext that it threatened the environment - both in the resort of Burgas itself and along the construction route. Russian experts immediately called such arguments far-fetched, as they later did with the South Stream gas pipeline.
The current statements by Radev and Mitsotakis prove that the construction of the oil pipeline was disrupted for political reasons.
As PolitNavigator reported , in the spring of 2022, Bulgaria provided Kyiv with fuel and Soviet-era weapons.
Bulgaria and Greece are reviving a "dirty" project they previously refused to implement with Russia.