Prospecting for oil and gas in the Khan Asparuh block in the Black Sea aquatoria is scheduled to start at the beginning of next week, Prime Minister Boyko Borissov announced. The project in question is by three leading international companies which have been waiting for it to be greenlighted since 2012. According to the current conservative government, the foot-dragging goes back to the Oresharski cabinet, as he was afraid lest gas extraction in Bulgaria reduce the country’s dependence on Russian gas deliveries.

Experts say considerable gas resources may be found on a territory of 14,000 square kilometers, some 80 kilometers off Varna. Their hopes are fueled by the fact that between 40 and 80 billion cubic meters of gas were found in the waters of neighbouring Romania. In recent years, annual consumption in Bulgaria has stood at around 4 billion cubic meters; by the end of the year this figure is expected to reach 6.3 billion. At this time Bulgaria imports around 85 percent of the natural gas it needs from Russia and was hence among the countries hit hardest by the 2009 gas crisis.

This crisis was in fact a watershed for the energy policy of the whole of Europe. Since then much effort has been put into finding alternatives to Russia and there are countries that have found such alternative sources. Neighboring Romania is developing its own gas fields and now has to import a mere 10 percent of the gas it needs. Lithuania purchased a tanker which is now berthed on the Baltic Sea as a huge liquefied gas terminal. The 300-meter long tanker is called Independenceand that says it all: with its capacity of 170,000 cubic meters of gas it is capable of providing 90 percent of the gas the three Baltic republics need.

But what about Bulgaria? Since 2009 the country has been “doing the tango” - two steps forward one step back. Every time there is a new government in Sofia, the priories in gas policies change, To this day not a single one of the planned big projects has been completed. The ambitious Nabucco gas pipeline that was supposed to circumvent Russia as supplier and to provide the EU direct access to the gas fields in the Caspian Sea fell through. Bulgaria declared it wanted to diversify its gas sources back in 2009, but that too remained on paper only. The tortuous process of creating gas interconnections with neighbouring Greece, Turkey, Romania and Serbia is something even the media are no longer interested in. Yet the interconnectors were touted as the only escape from the Russian monopoly. Though financed, in part, with European money not one of the four interconnectors has as yet been completed.

The new hope on the horizon now is called Khan Asparuh. Oil and gas have been prospected in the Black Sea for more than 25 years, experts say and add that what is needed is a clear political will and a strategy to continue the prospecting in the Black Sea. But therein lies the chronic problem of Bulgarian politics in every sphere – no continuity.

English version: Milena Daynova