Bulgaria says Iran has voiced interest in supplying it with natural gas through a pipeline from Greece.
The announcement has been made by Bulgaria’s Energy Minister Temenuzhka Petkova after a meeting with Iran’s Petroleum Minister Bijan Zanganeh.
Petkova has been quoted by Novinite news provider as saying that Zanganeh has told her that Iran stands ready to deliver amounts of gas to both countries via the link as soon as it is complete.
The Islamic Republic also eyes the LNG terminal in the city of Alexandroupoli which it could also supply.
Novinite further added that Petkova - who is accompanying Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borisov in a state visit to Iran - had told Zanganeh about the ongoing discussions between Bulgaria and Greece over a possible joint venture that could be used to build the terminal.
Last week, Iran’s Ambassador to Sofia Abdollah Norouzi was quoted by Novinite as saying that Iran is ready to provide crude oil as well as natural gas to Bulgaria.
Norouzi emphasized that the required preparations have already been prepared in Iran’s system of natural gas pipelines for exports to new targets such as Bulgaria through Turkey.
Iran’s media reported last April that Bulgaria had told Iran that it wants the country back in an ambitious plan to export natural gas to Europe through a major intercontinental pipeline scheme named as the Nabucco project.
This had been raised in a meeting between Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Borisov with Ambassador Norouzi.
A consortium led by Austria’s OMV is pursuing Nabucco project to pipe natural gas to Europe. It had originally designated Iran as a key supplier of the project. However, the country was sidelined from the scheme in 2008 due to a series of complications that emerged - the most important of which were US sanctions.
To the same effect, Iran’s media reported on Monday that Prime Minister Borisov in a meeting with Iran’s First Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri in Tehran on Monday had discussed the creation of a major gas hub between the two countries.
This, as Iran’s Mehr News Agency suggested, could set the ground for Iran’s return to Nabucco.