Companies

Russian energy giant Gazprom cut off its gas supplies to Germany via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline for maintenance work on Wednesday, further raising tensions on an already taut electricity market.

Entsog, the operator of the pipeline, announced that gas deliveries had been halted shortly before 0600 GMT.

"The estimated price of natural gas will be around BGN 350 (EUR 179), which is an increase of around 17 percent compared to the price for August," said Denitsa Zlateva, executive director of Bulgargaz, after the meeting of the Commission for Energy and Water Regulation.

According to her, this is due to the increased stock market index.

"Bulgaria did not make the right decision regarding the old contract with Gazprom. There is no way to sign a new contract. Every step is a big problem. We are going to arbitration, most likely."

Facebook has reached a preliminary agreement in a long-running lawsuit seeking damages from the social network for allowing third parties, including the company Cambridge Analytica, to access users' private data.     

The caretaker government does not intend to negotiate a new short-term, medium-term or long-term contract with Gazprom, but only to obtain quantities under the existing contract.

The price of natural gas on the Dutch exchange TTF reached 341 euros per megawatt hour yesterday, and electricity supply contracts in Germany and France broke all records. Against this background, the Czech Presidency of the European Union announced that it is preparing an extraordinary meeting of energy ministers.

If "We Continue the Change" gets a chance to form a government after the elections on October 2, either Asen Vassilev or Kiril Petkov will be nominated as prime minister.

This was announced by the two in a joint interview with BNT. "We will decide together after the elections," said Kiril Petkov.

Some 42 Turkish companies entered ENR's (Engineering News Record) 2022 Top 250 International Contractors list, up from 40 firms that made it on to the previous list.

The top 10 Turkish companies in the list are Rönenans, Limak, Yapı Merkezi, Enka, Ant Yapı, Tekfen, Onur Taahhüt, Esta inşaat, Alarko and TAV.

Swiss bank UBS proceeded to an upward revision of the growth for Greece to 5.7% this year, from 4% which was the previous forecast, mainly as a result of the strong impact of tourism, also foreseeing that in 2023 the growth rate of the GDP will reach 4% (from 4.7% which was the previous estimate).

The price of electricity in Europe jumped by more than 25%, according to the prices of the European Electricity Exchange, Bloomberg reports. That's about 14 times the seasonal average over the past five years. The increase in prices is due to the concerns related to the shutdown of the Nord Stream.