Gazprom

Workers at the construction site of the interconnected IGB gas transmission pipeline, starting at Komotini, Greece and ending at Stara Zagora, Bulgaria, March 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/DIMITRIS TOSIDIS.

Issues have arisen over the certification of the project, which prompted interim Energy Minister Rosen Hristov, who is yet to publicly comment on the matter, to block the process. 

"I read an interesting comment by a political scientist. He said this - 'President Radev has a complex towards the people who created him'. There is probably something like that - a male complex towards the woman who made him president."

This was commented on bTV by the chairman of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), Kornelia Ninova.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said that Serbia wishes to "talk to the Russians" about the Oil Industry of Serbia, NIS, which is majority-owned by two Russian energy companies, and if need be "take over", while EU sanctions against Russian oil companies are in force.

With anxiety in Europe escalating over Moscow's stance after the end of the ten-day maintenance period on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline on July 21, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called a meeting on the country's energy supply security measures.

Russian exporters will begin shipping liquefied petroleum gas (LPG or propane-butane) to Bulgaria via the Black Sea port of Poti in Georgia as traditional export routes remain closed, Reuters reports.

In his video address, Zelensky recalled that the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had invited the Canadian representative because of what he considered to be an absolutely unacceptable exclusion from the sanctions regime against Russia, reports Interfax Ukraine.

Russian gas deliveries via Nord Stream - the main pipeline for gas exports from Russia to Europe - will be temporarily suspended from this morning until July 21 due to planned annual maintenance work on the pipeline. In this way, natural gas from Russia will continue to enter Western and Central Europe through only one transit line through Ukraine.

The Canadian government says it will allow the delivery to Germany of equipment from a key Russia-Europe natural gas pipeline that has undergone maintenance _ equipment the absence of which Russia's Gazprom cited last month as a reason for more than halving the flow of gas.

Germany said on July 8 it hopes to convince Canada to deliver a turbine needed to maintain the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, with Russia waiting on the machine's arrival before increasing supplies.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov arrives for the European Council Summit in Brussels, Belgium, 24 March 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/JULIEN WARNAND

"We can't find 121 MPs who are not afraid", Petkov told the media, referring to the number needed for a majority in parliament, and the influence that criminal structures allegedly have on parliament.