Greece and Bulgaria will consider resurrecting a pipeline project to transport crude oil from the Greek port of Alexandropoulis on the Aegean Sea to the Bulgarian port of Burgas on the Black Sea on Feb. 16, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced Thursday, according to a number of media outlets.
Bulgaria is said to be “planning to build a 300km trans-Balkan oil pipeline to supply non-Russian crude oil to its only Black Sea refinery”.
Let us recall that this “Neftochim Burgas” plant, which our Association has repeatedly written about, is under the control of the aggressor concern “Lukoil” and has come under a number of EU sanctions.
Bulgarian President Rumen Radev, about whom the ARC has also repeatedly written, personally arrived in Athens to lobby for this pipeline project. Indeed, one can recognize Greece’s plans to create its own energy hub, based on the liquefied natural gas terminal in Revithoussa and the activities of the gas network operator DESFA.
At the same time, it is obvious that the created new pipeline will theoretically allow not only to pump oil from the Greek port to the Bulgarian plant in the port of Burgas, but also vice versa, to transship the oil delivered to Burgas by the same Lukoil to European markets.
Additionally, we note that the idea of a pipeline from Burgas to Alexandroupolis, precisely in the interests of expanding the supply of Russian energy resources, was actively lobbied twenty years ago by Russian spy Georgiy Muradov, who then acted under the guise of a “Russian diplomat” in the Balkans, and now actively serves the interests of the Kremlin, including and along the “Balkan direction”, in the Russia-occupied Crimea.
