Russian president Vladimir Putin will be in Athens on September 4 for talks on the energy sector, according to an official statement, understood to mean an attempt to achieve progress on the Bourgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline.
Putin will hold talks with Greek prime minister Kostas Karamanlis and with a senior representative of the Bulgarian state. Sources differed as to whether the Bulgarian representative would be President Georgi Purvanov or Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev. The Kremlin and some Greek media reports said that Bulgaria would be represented by Purvanov, while other reports said that it would be Stanishev.
The oil pipeline plan has been under discussion for more than 10 years. According to Athens newspaper Kathimerini, Putin told Stanishev and Karamanlis a month ago that he would guarantee that the pipeline would be supplied with sufficient crude to be viable.
The most recent word from Bulgaria was from Regional Development Minister Assen Gagauzov, who said last month that Russia had asked for an additional two months for the financial estimates. A key issue is that Russia has asked the other two partners, Bulgaria and Greece, to agree to reduce their respective stakes in the pipeline project.
The route of the pipeline is to be between the Black Sea and the Aegean, bypassing the Bosphorus Strait in Turkey.
In April last year, it appeared that the way had been cleared for the pipeline to start making progress, after the signing of a memorandum by the three governments. However, since then there have been differences of opinion over the relative stakes in the project. Russia already has 51 per cent, and the September 4 talks are likely to revolve around the presentation of a revised proposal by Putin to the other two states.
Earlier this summer, efforts were made by Greece to resolve the issue during a bilateral engagement with Russia, while the matter has also been taken up at European Union level, with the European Commission floating the idea of contributing funding to the project.
There is also a wider debate about a future oil transportation route, with a US-backed study proposing an alternative route, involving the transit of oil from Russia across the Black Sea to a Bulgaria-Macedonia-Albania-Adriatic pipeline. Alternative routes to the Bourgas-Alexandroupolis project could offer more efficient and cheaper options, their proponents say.
In early July, Greeces deputy foreign minister Evripidis Stylianidis said that Kazakhstan had expressed interest in the Bourgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline project, saying that this was a success for Greeces energy diplomacy.
He said that Kazakhstan had expressed a desire to participate in the project, either through a joint venture or by supplying the pipeline with oil from Kazakhstan, during a meeting with local energy and mineral resources minister Baktykozha Izmukhambetov and the chair of the state oil company KazMunaiGaz National, Uzakbay Karabalin.
Stylianidis said that the prospect, if agreed, would ensure that the pipeline was both viable and competitive. According to the minister, boosting co-operation with oil-rich Kazakhstan was part of a strategy of opening toward this rapidly developing country.
