Former Finance Minister Asen Vassilev denied the allegations that Bulgaria receives Russian gas through intermediaries. He called:
„If Mr. Borisov has any documents, let him take them out and show them.“
When asked whether our country currently receives Russian gas and under what scheme, the former Deputy Prime Minister clarified: „This is a question for Bulgargaz. As far as I know, no gas has been received from Gazprom Export for the past months. Every day we sent each other the request and the next day we did not receive the quantities. This is a practice that we have imposed from the moment the contract was unilaterally suspended, so that by the end of the year, when the contract expires, we have fulfilled 100% of the clauses that it must fulfill. After which we can take our arbitration actions for the other party’s default.“
Gas was available until Gazprom stopped making deliveries, Vassilev also noted. According to him, at that time there were no restrictions for customers, the price rose from BGN 140 to BGN 160 per megawatt hour. The following month, it fell again to 140 BGN and he added: „We had the worst scenarios – what would happen if Chernobyl 2 happened, what would happen if the crop was infected, what would happen if the gas and oil stopped, if the Bosporus closes. From that point of view, there was a pretty quick response and there was no stoppage in consumption.“
For now, our country receives the full volume of Azeri gas, after it was welded at 30 percent. He specified that we receive these 30 percent at the original agreed price, and the rest at the price at which we would buy gas from Russia. According to him, we will receive the rest at a lower price when act 16 of the relationship with Greece is issued.
Vassilev also commented on the question of whether they will appear together at the early vote with „Democratic Bulgaria“. He stated that they were still collecting and analyzing the information, but an absolutely pragmatic approach would be taken in deciding whether together they would take more mandates than separately.
