Russian, Bulgarian FMs to discuss investment energy projects

MOSCOW, June 2 (Itar-Tass) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
will meet with his Bulgarian counterpart Nikolay Mladenov in Moscow on
Thursday, June 2, to discuss a wide range of issues concerning
Russian-Bulgarian cooperation, including trade and economic ties.
The ministers will also discuss "the implementation of major
investment projects in the energy sector, and cultural and humanitarian
cooperation," Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.
"Special attention will be paid to pressing international issues, the
situation in the Balkans and in the Black Sea region," he said.
Lavrov and Mladenov will sign a number of bilateral documents.
Russia remains one of the main economic partners of Bulgaria, being
first in terms of expert and third in terms of trade turnover, after
Germany and Greece. Experts say that trade turnover between the two
countries increased by 51 percent in 2010 to about 4 billion U.S. dollar.
At the latest meeting of the bilateral inter-governmental commission
in Moscow, the sides stated their readiness to develop cooperation in the
fields of agriculture, tourism, and transport. But economic relations
between Russia and Bulgaria rest on energy cooperation. Interaction in
this sector develops through three major projects: the Bulgarian part of
the South Stream gas pipeline, the Belene nuclear power plant, and the
Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline.
South Stream, which will be jointly built by Gazprom and ENI, will
eventually take 30 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas a year to
southern Europe, with Greece becoming a transit state on the southern arm
of the pipeline pumping gas to Italy.
South Stream is scheduled to become operational in 2013. The
900-kilometre-long undersea section of the pipeline will run from the gas
compressor facility at Beregovaya, on Russia's Black Sea coast, near
Arkhipo-Osipovka, towards the city of Burgas, in Bulgaria. The sea's
maximum depth on this route is 2,000 metres.
The Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline is an oil pipeline that will be
used to transport Russian and Caspian oil from the Bulgarian Black Sea
port of Burgas to the Greek Aegean port of Alexandroupolis. The pipeline
will be an alternative route for Russian oil bypassing the Bosporus and
the Dardanelles. Its construction was supposed to begin in June of 2009 to
be completed by the beginning of 2011.
In late November 2010, Russia and Bulgaria signed a memorandum that
lays down the principles of establishing a project company to build the
Belene nuclear power plant.