As of 3.30am on January 6 2009 the supply of Russian natural gas to Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey and Macedonia has been halted, Bulgarian Ministry of Economy and Energy said on January 6 2009. This leaves Bulgarian entirely dependent on its natural gas reserves in the village of Chiren in central Bulgaria. According to Bulgargaz, the state-owned natural gaz distributing company, these reserves can last up to one month with reduced supplies. http://sofiaecho.com/article/bulgar...al-gas-supplies-via-ukraine/id_33862/catid_38
Are you suggesting to not sell the GAS and give it for free? I welcome you to do so if you can. Seriously, if USA could send $2 bln for Ukraine's gas bills, I would be very happy Ukraine is an independent country and not the state of Russia. Gazprom offered the price of $250 for the year 2009, while the price for the rest of european countries is > $400. Ukraine said no. Now they can pay the same price as all others do. There is a VALID contract untill 2010 on transit of gas via Ukraine, Ukraine dont wanna pay for the gas bills, thus they are started to steal it from the transit pipeline. As of result, Gazprom cut the pipeline off + Ukraine shut every pipeline off. When Gazprom wanted to give an extra 15 bl cubic metres to the european countries, Ukraine said no. I dont know what is Ukraine up to, but there are talks that Ukraine is going to bankrupt this spring.
Bulgaria is the most affected countrie. All other contries have alternative gas supply. I live in Bulgaria. Our central heating is cutted and in January's day -10 celsius outside the situation in my room is not so comfortable. Our Bulgarian government must be charged agains this problem and asked why the didn't made an alternative gas tunnel to Turkey. And also Ukraine has to be pushed to transit the amount of gas for Bulgari. Bulgaria have paid all his bulls to GASPROM
Russia is not duty bound to sell it's gas to anybody if isn't satisfied with the money they are offering, if countries don't like it they can always shop elsewhere. Norway I believe has a good supply that many people are interested in tapping into.
Thats why Gazprom is building a new Nord-Stream pipe with Germany + south pipeline via Turkey. Ukraine is a pain in the a**, the same situation happened in 2006 with Ukraine. Theres also a transit pipe via Belarus to Poland etc., however some countries totally depend on the ukranian transit pipeline, I guess Bulgaria is one of them.
wow dude, it has allready affected you that way? We have no problems here yet, we're lucky we have some of our own gas resources.
Nor is Ukraine duty bound to act as transit for Russian gas. I guess somewhere along the lines they need to make a compromise.
Ukraine gets paid for the transit with a VALID contract till 2010 that they broke. The reason they broke it is that Gazprom did not want to sell the gas to Ukraine dirt cheap. (~ $200 they wanted)