Bulgaria and Russia signed an additional agreement at a company level on the Bourgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline during the visit of Bulgarian Economy and Energy Minister Petar Dimitrov to Moscow in the beginning of November 2007.
Russia gave up its claims to buy Bulgarian and Greek shares in the project, as well as the demands for provision of certain quantities of petrol and financial guarantees in case the parties would fail to provide the quantities required, mediapool.bg reported.
Russia would take the entire responsibility for the oil supplies, the companies agreed. The supplies were assigned to Russia in the inter-governmental agreement between Russia, Greece and Bulgaria, signed in March 2007. On the last couple of meetings however, “Russia tried to blackmail Bulgaria and Greece to take part in the supplies, according to their shares,” mediapool.bg said.
The decisions in the future international company responsible for the project would be taken with a majority of 80 per cent. Thus the interests of the two minoritary shareholders, Bulgaria and Greece, would be guaranteed, the companies agreed.
Dimitrov said that the receiver of the transit taxes for the oil transfer from Bourgas to Alexandroupolis was to be decided. It could be either the international company responsible for the project, or the correspondent country, which would give part of the money to the company.
Current agreement envisions the taxes to be paid to the international company, which would divide them among the Bulgarian, Russian and Greek companies, according to their ownership share.
Bulgaria wants the taxes to be paid directly to the budget to guarantee its profit from the pipeline. Authorities in Bulgaria were worried that as the international company would be registered in an EU member state, part of the profit could be concealed.
Russia wanted the construction of the pipeline to begin in April 2008, mediapool.bg said. It was still uncertain whether the evaluation of the environmental impact of the project would be ready by that time.
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