Bulgaria's Minister of Energy and Economy Petar Dimitrov met Friday with the Deputy Director of the Russian energy giant Gazprom Alexander Medvedev, who came on a surprise visit to Sofia, BGNES reported.

During the meeting, Dimitrov handed Medvedev a letter from the Bulgarian side formally demanding compensations from Gazprom for the natural gas shortage crisis caused by the Russian gas cutoff during Russia's recent pricing dispute with the Ukraine.

The Bulgarian government has offered three possible ways for Gazprom to compensate it for its losses - through direct cash payments, through gas supplies at cheaper prices, or through providing Bulgaria with access to the Russian gas transit network so that it could receive gas from third countries.

The Gazrpom Deputy Head said the formal demands of the Bulgarian government were to yet to be considered. Medvedev also said, however, that the letter did not contain any references to the gas supplies contract between the Russian and the Bulgarian sides.

According to Medvedev, Russia was only obliged to provide Bulgaria with additional supplies in order to restore the reserves at the Chiren Storage Facility. In his words, Bulgaria did not need to transit gas from third countries through the Russian transit network because Russia had sufficient quantities of gas to supply Bulgaria.

(Bulgaria's President Parvanov recently negotiated gas supplies from Central Asian states but the only way for Bulgaria to receive them is through the Russian gas transit network.)

The Gazprom representative also mentioned that there were possibilities of delivering Russian gas to Bulgaria through Turkey and Greece but that these were still to be discussed. He did emphasize, however, the need to diversify the energy routes, and said the work on the South Stream gas transit pipeline, which is to connect Russia and Bulgaria through the Black Sea, was advancing.

Medvedev was positive that the gas cutoff would not happen again if Russia and the Ukraine keep their obligations under the agreement they just signed.

During the meeting the Bulgarian Energy Minister Dimitrov notified Medvedev that Bulgaria wanted to sign a new contract for Russian gas supplies directly with Gazprom without using its subsidiaries as intermediaries.

"I am the Chair of the Board of Directors of Overgas and I would like to state that this company is not an intermediary in the gas supplies but it is a leader in investments in Bulgaria's gas transit network. We are ready to welcome Bulgargaz if it wants to become one of our shareholders", Medvedev replied to Dimitrov.

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