THE announcement made by Greece’s deputy minister of development, Georgios Salagoudis, on January 28 that a memorandum on the construction of the Bourgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline will be signed on March 15 was premature.
This was reported on February 3 by the English-language online edition Russia Journal, which quoted Russian top officials. The Bulgarian Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works said that no date had been fixed yet for the signing.
Salagoudis also said that Russian oil producers LUKoil, Gazprom, and Rosneft, together with the pipeline agency Transneft, had shown interest in the project. But he noted that TNK-BP (Tyumenskaya Neftenaya Kompania – British Petroleum), the British-controlled Russian oil producer, is to be the project co-ordinator, while the Gazprom construction affiliate, Stroytransgaz, would be the lead contractor.
LUKoil told the Russia Journal it was opposed to the project on profitability grounds it has yet to identify. Transneft has reacted by saying that “currently no information is available on the Bourgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline”. What this really means is that Transneft is still hoping to win approval in Ankara for a Turkish pipeline project in which Transneft would control the oil flow, and stand to make a much greater share of the profits than is possible with the Bulgarian-Greek pipeline.