Chairman of the Bulgarian Commission for Energy and Water Regulation (KEVR) Stanislav Todorov said that Bulgaria’s sole Chiren natural gas storage facility is currently 42 % full and is being filled up at a rate of around 1% every two days. At this rate, the storage should be full by the end of October.
Todorov projects that the price of natural gas will start decreasing once European countries fill up their storage facilities to 90 %. European gas storage facilities are currently filled up at around 60 % of their capacity and Bulgaria can catch up in that regard, he said, reminding that Bulgaria was among the first countries affected by the cuts of Russian gas supply.
He welcomed the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding related to the sale of natural gas from the planned Vlora LNG terminal in Albania, between Bulgarian gas supplier Overgas and the US company Excelerate Energy for the supply of over 1 billion cubic meters of natural gas over the course of ten years. According to him, this agreement is a huge success for Overgas, similar to Bulgargaz’ agreement with Azerbaijan.
He stressed that there will be enough natural gas for Bulgaria this winter and it will come from Azerbaijan. This, however, would only account for a third of the country’s consumption, which is why Bulgargaz must find the remaining 70 %. The more long-term these natural gas supply contracts are, the cheaper the price will be, but the problem is that all of Europe is currently in search of natural gas and Bulgaria must also expand this search globally, Todorov concluded.
