If the contract with “Botash” is to be canceled, Bulgaria may suffer double damage. This is what energy expert Iliyan Vassilev predicted to Darik Radio.
On Friday, the National Assembly obliged Energy Minister Vladimir Malinov to renegotiate the agreement between Bulgargaz and the Turkish state energy company Botash.
“The problem is this repetitive pattern of doing business deals. The scheme of concluding these transactions is the same. It was the same with “Turkish Stream”, it is the same with “Botash” – a Bulgarian minister negotiates something with the head of a corporation. This is a sustainable trend, probably inherited from the Soviet practices – to negotiate energy deals on a political level,” Vassilev commented.
According to him, if the agreement with “Botash” is canceled, Bulgaria will be threatened with a case in the International Arbitration, where the Turkish company can request and receive penalties.
“On the other hand, the European Commission can impose sanctions on us if it finds that this agreement does not meet European energy conditions. So there is a risk that Bulgaria will be doubly damaged”, stressed the energy expert.
According to the chief economist at the Institute for Energy Management, Kaloyan Staykov, the big problem is that such contracts are concluded without any explanations.
“These decisions are always made without a clear vision, without public discussion and without it being clear whether and in what way the specific contract changes Bulgaria’s role in the energy market. What is worse is that there is no long-term vision, the consumption of natural gas is decreasing both in Europe and in Bulgaria, and there is no clear strategy as to whether Bulgaria plans to develop this consumption, and it is also unclear what the role of Bulgargaz will be in the region,” said more Staikov.
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