Bulgaria, Greece and Russia finalized Wednesday an agreement for cooperation in the construction and operation of Burgas-Alexandrupolis oil pipeline after lingering for more than 14 years.

Kalin Rogachev, Bulgarian Deputy Minister of Regional Development and Public Works, Andrei Dementiev, Russian Deputy Minister of Industry and Energy, and Nikos Stefanou, General Secretary of Greece's Development Ministry agrreed on the final changes in the trilateral agreement in the Bulgarian coastal town of Burgas.

The agreement will be signed on February 22, or on March 6 or March 8 in Athens.

Bulgaria will earn about BGN 35 M per year from the pipeline, Rogachev boasted. The project will open some 1,000 work spaces in Bulgaria alone.

Stefanou commented that this pipeline would finally put Bulgaria and Greece on the energy map of the world.

Initially developed in the mid 1990s, the strategic oil pipeline is projected to transport Russian crude oil along a land route that bypasses the traffic-congested Bosphorus and Hellespont straits. Its initial capacity is set at 35 million tonnes of oil per year, which could increase to 50 million tonnes per year.

Three Russian energy companies are to acquire cumulatively a 51% stake in the operations of the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline. The remainder will be shared out between Bulgaria and Greece.

The pipeline will be 280 kilometres long. The Bulgarian section is 166 kilometres and will run via seven municipalities in South-eastern Bulgaria.

The cost of the project is set at USD 700- 900 M.

Concerns over the project's viability, ownership share, a guaranteed supply of oil, as well as the financing parts have kept the project on the drawing boards for about a decade.

The three-way venture is the first stage of a broader framework project on the transiting of crude oil.

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