Bulgaria plans to cut natural gas imports from Russia to 50 percent of its annual consumption within five years to ensure energy bottlenecks don’t hold back economic growth, according to President Rosen Plevneliev.
The European Union’s poorest member, which gets 87 percent of its gas from Russia, is seeking to link with the planned Trans-Adriatic Pipeline that will ship 10 billion cubic meters of gas a year to Italy from Turkey, Plevneliev said today in an interview at Bloomberg’s New York headquarters. A 2009 dispute between Ukraine and Russia that cut flows to Bulgaria for two weeks highlighted the need for greater independence, he said.
“In five years’ time, we’d like to see at least 50 percent of the gas consumption in Bulgariacoming from different and diversified sources,” Plevneliev said.
