Ukraine has signed the trilateral deal agreed by Russia and the European Union on a restoration of natural gas supplies on the basis of EU monitoring of transit operations through Ukraine, but it remains unclear when countries such as Bulgaria will have a significant supply again.

On January 11 2009, Deutsche Welle reported that Russian gas state monopoly Gazprom had said that the deal was not yet being implemented because it had not yet been set a copy of the protocol signed in Kiev.

Czech prime minister Mirek Topolanek, on behalf of the EU whose rotating presidency his country currently holds, signed the deal with his Russian counterpart on January 10 and headed for Kiev to secure the signature of Ukraine prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Ukraine promised on January 10 to supply Bulgaria with gas from its own reserves, but according to a January 11 report by Bulgarian National Television, Bulgartransgas executive director Angel Semerdjiev said that supplies from Ukraine had not yet started moving. He rejected as untrue an earlier report by Russian news agency Itar-Tass that Ukraine gas supplies were already on their way to Bulgaria and Moldova.

Bulgarian Energy and Economy Minister Petar Dimitrov said on January 11 that the transit of Ukraine gas through Romania to Bulgaria was not technically possible. This means that the Ukranian promise to supply Bulgaria from its own reserves cannot become reality.

Earlier on January 11, Bulgarian President Georgi Purvanov's press office announced that in a telephone conversation, Romanian head of state Traian Basescu had promised Purvanov that as soon as Ukraine supplied gas, it would be transported to Bulgaria without delay.

According to Purvanov's office, he and Basescu agreed that the building of a permanent connection between Bulgaria's and Romania's gas networks should be done as a priority, with EU assistance.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev told a January 11 news conference that the first task was to restore the supply of gas, and then see how to connect the networks of Bulgaria, Romania and Greece.

On January 12, there will be talks with Bulgaria, Romania and Greece about a project to interconnect the three countries' gas distribution networks. The meeting will be held in Brussels.

Stanishev said that he had been promised by Gazprom chief executive Aleksei Miller that Bulgaria would be the first country to have its gas supply restored. Bulgarian news agency BTA reported Stanishev as saying that he had spoken with Miller over the phone at about 3pm local time on January 11, and that Miller had confirmed that as soon as Gazprom got a copy of the agreement signed early on Sunday in Kiev about the deployment of international teams of monitors at pumping stations along the route of gas pipelines to oversee the transit of Russian gas through Russia and Ukraine to Europe, the teams would dispatched at their points.

As at Sunday afternoon, Gazprom had not yet received the signed protocol on international monitoring of the gas transit.

On January 10, Ukraine said that it could supply Bulgaria with up to 2.5 million cu m of gas daily. The agreement was reached after a telephone conversation between Purvanov and Ukrainian president Victor Yuschenko.

A few hours later, Purvanov and Moldovan president Vladimir Voronin spoke on the phone, with Voronin promising that he would ensure unobstructed transition of gas for Bulgaria through Moldovan territory.

Itar-Tass reported on January 11, quoting Moldovan prime minister Zinaida Greceanii, that Ukraine had started delivering natural gas to Moldova from its own reserves.

Currently, Moldova has strict restrictions on gas consumption - power plants and thermal power plants in Chisinau have shifted to fuel oil, the temperature of central heating has dropped by half, and warm water has been halted.

Dimitrov said that Ukraine had started filling up the gas pipeline connected to Romania, but Bulgaria was not connected to its northern neighbour's gas supply network.

"Bulgaria finds itself in a process of waiting for the 36 hours until the natural gas shipment from Russia is to arrive," Dimitrov said.

Earlier on January 11, Dimitrov said that the natural gas would come to Bulgaria after the transit volumes reach Romanian town of Isaccea. "We expect that this will happen in the next 24 hours," Dimitrov said. The price would be set according to the natural gas volumes received.

But, "up to the present moment, there are no natural gas deliveries received from Ukraine," Atanas Saykov, chief of the Crisis Management department with the Ministry of Economy and Energy, it emerged some hours later.

Asked when the natural gas volumes from Ukraine were expected to arrive in Bulgaria, in the light of reports in the Russian media, Saykov said that Bulgaria had filed orders for natural gas shipments to both Russia and Ukraine.

"When the natural gas arrives at Bulgaria's border, we will be able to make an official statement. The Crisis Staff is waiting for information and when there is such signal we will start (…) filling up the pipes. About 48 hours is needed for the gas network to be working. Up to the present moment, there is no natural gas shipment," Saykov said.

"With the restriction of natural gas deliveries, we believe that the situation in Bulgaria is under control," he said.

Saykov said that information dating from the morning of January 11 was that the Toplofikatsiya-Sofia Izrok (Druzhba residential district) heating utility resumed the normal supply of central heating at a temperature of about 74 °C.

Heating utility Toplofikatsiya-Burgas was operating on mixed fuel, using both natural gas and oil residue. Toplofikatsiya-Pleven is due to shift to the same system.

Electricity consumption in Bulgaria was within normal limits, with no overload. Reserves from heating utilities and hydroelectric power plants were being used.

Stanishev told a January 10 news conference that Bulgaria currently was capable of meeting about 45 per cent of the demand for gas and could continue to do so until January 21 2009. If the gas supply problem was not solved by that date, there would be gas rationing, Stanishev said.

Bulgarian Energy Minister Dimitrov told journalists that Bulgaria would claim compensation from suppliers because of the shutoff of the supply of natural gas.

However, Dimitrov said, the matter was complicated legally because of a lack of clarity about to whom Bulgaria should present such claims.

Bulgarian media reports on January 10 said that the domestic reserve facility being used had complications because there was some lack of clarity about the proportions of ownership of gas stored at the facility.

As the gas crisis dragged on, there was domestic political fallout, with Sofia mayor Boiko Borrisov - leader of the Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria, which is expected to take the largest share of votes in parliamentary elections in summer 2009 - said that the state had failed to take proper measures and was hiding the real data about reserves of natural gas volumes.

"They either lack any reserves or are lying to us that the reserve will meet the demand for 30 days - I call this manipulation, populism and lies," Focus reported Borissov as saying.

He said that all thermal power plants in Sofia were operating on both oil residue and natural gas at one and the same time and that the pollution rate was really high. "The Government is poisoning people," Borissov said.