The supplies of Russian natural gas to Europe could be restored as early as January 9 2009, Russian news agency rbc.ru reported on January 8 2009.

At a meeting in Brussels, Aleksey Miller, CEO of Russia's Gazprom, said that Gazprom was ready to resume the supplies from the moment when European Commission's experts start monitoring the supply and transit of Russian natural gas through Ukraine.

The EC said that this could happen as early as January 9 2009, news agencies said. According to some reports, if the gas supplies are restored on January 9 2009 it will take four days for Bulgaria to feel the result at full scale. 

Bulgaria was cut off from its sole natural gas supply pipeline without warning in the early hours of January 6 2009, which threw the country into an energy crisis. Currently the country is using its own natural gas supplies, which are just enough for heating, but with more than 100 schools closing down and maintaining the production units of large-scale plants in a safe but not productive mode.

Business associations in Bulgaria have warned of hundreds of millions of leva in losses and forced extensions to seasonal operational shutdowns because of the cutoff of Russian natural gas.