Bulgaria to walk away from oil pipeline

There's little chance that Bulgaria will be a party to the planned Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline project, a Bulgarian finance official said. Bulgaria in 2007 signed an agreement with Russia and Greece to build the 174-mile Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline to bypass crowded waterways near Turkey by crossing an overland route to the Aegean Sea. Bulgarian Finance Minister Simeon Djankov said following a Wednesday meeting with government officials that Sofia planned to end its role in the pipeline project. Sofia, he said, would seek to terminate the trilateral agreement by mutual consent. If that doesn't work, the country would pull out unilaterally in about a year. "There is no threat of sanctions, we have been working for over a year with international companies and law offices, there is no chance that Bulgaria will incur sanctions," he was quoted by the Sofia News Agency as saying. In April, members of the Bulgarian Parliament suggested the 2007 deal doesn't contain provisions for Bulgaria to back out of the agreement. Moscow had claimed the Bulgarian government owes about $10.3 million related to the project. Bulgarian officials brushed off past threats from Moscow, however, saying the pressure was intended more as a negotiation tactic than as a statement of intent.