Bulgargaz demands 400 million euros from Gazprom for shutting Russian gas flow

Two years after Gazprom stopped gas supplies to Bulgaria, the Balkan country’s public distributer -  Bulgargaz - will officially file claims against the Russian energy giant for damages equal to 400 million euros. The claim will initially be made to the Gazprom Export subsidiary and a short period of time will be given to allow it to be settled voluntarily. If not, Bulgargaz will file an arbitration case in Paris. This was announced by the Bulgarian Energy Minister Vladimir Malinov at a special briefing on the subject.

The Russian giant Gazprom stopped gas supplies to Bulgaria back in April 2022.

A possible arbitration case by Bulgaria against Gazprom became a possibility already in December 2022, when Bulgargaz began looking for a law firm to conduct a study and analysis of the possibilities of filing such a claim against the Russian gas company. Subsequently, then-caretaker energy minister Rosen Hristov spoke several more times about the idea of ​​Bulgaria filing a claim, but it never came to that.

Now the current energy minister has indicated that the claim is based

on a legal and financial analysis, which was significantly delayed, by using the services of external law firms".

Vladimir Malinov added that Gazprom will be given an "extremely short period of time - no more than a month" to voluntarily settle the claim.

A number of energy companies in Europe have already filed lawsuits against Gazprom because the company unilaterally changed the contracts concluded with the requirement for a special payment scheme to be made in Russian rubles.

Malinov also announced that the Turkish gas supply state company Botas will make a discount of 11 million euros for Bulgaria for the month of June as part of the capacity reservation contract. The news comes after politicians insisted on renegotiating or even terminating the contract with Botas on the grounds of unfavorable conditions for the Bulgarian state. Subsequently, the energy minister pointed out that the deal with Botas would be difficult to renegotiate.

Regarding the price of electricity for households from 1 July, the energy minister added that, in all probability, the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant will revise its proposal for a 30% increase in the price of electricity submitted to the Bulgarian Energy and Water Regulatory Commission.

Translated by Tzvetozar Vincent Iolov