The natural gas deliveries from Russia to Bulgaria have decreased, said caretaker Economy and Energy Minister Vasil Shtonov, quoted by the BNT public broadcaster.

According to him, the pressure of the incoming gas supplies is supposed to be above 38 bar, but in the past week it was varying between 30 and 35 bar. “This means we are getting less gas than agreed,” Shtonov said. “The unofficial information is that this was due to technical problems in Russia, but there is no way to tell because there are no gauges at the border between Russia and Ukraine. We are expecting the problems to be solved soon.”

Shtonov told journalists that the lacking gas quantities are compensated with between 1 and 2 million cubic metres of gas drawn from the Chiren underground storage.

According to him, the daily capacity of Chiren was around 4.1 million cubic metres daily. “The moment we exceed those quantities, the thermal power stations must switch to heating oil,” Shtonov said. “We hope this will not happen.”

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