Sofia and the Greek-Turkish energy race

The recent announcement of a long-term energy agreement between Turkey and Bulgaria giving Bulgargaz access for 13 years to the regasification terminals of Turkey's state-run Botas pipeline company, thus offering assured quantities, came as a surprise to some and caused consternation in Athens.

Especially after the reactivation in 2019 of the Greece-Bulgaria High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council (HSCC), which reconvened in the northern Greek port of Alexandroupoli in February 2020 after a long hiatus, bilateral relations between the two neighbors seemed to have entered a new and fruitful footing, with energy being a key part of this. Even before the Alexandroupoli meeting, a bilateral agreement for the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB) natural gas pipeline had been finalized in September 2019, signed in October 2019 and put into operation three years later despite the...