At the end of last week Russia’s energy giant Gazprom started the actual construction of the Turkish Steam gas pipeline after Russian President Vladimir Putin gave green light to that project, quoted by BNR.

Turkish Stream will supply Turkey with nearly 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas vie two gas pipes which are to cross the bottom of the Black Sea. Some of the gas quantities will later reach Central and Western Europe.

The gas pipeline project is expected to be completed by 2020.

Two years ago all politicians and energy experts were talking about another gas project that also had to cross the Black Sea – the South Stream gas pipeline project. It had to cross Bulgaria on its way to Central Europe. Bulgaria was lobbying openly for that project, because this country was hoping to collect reasonable revenues from the transit of Russian gas through its territory.

The transit fees would have been quite substantial, taking into consideration the fact that according to the initial plans, the capacity of the suspended South Stream project would have been twice bigger that the Turkish stream.

Currently, official Sofia refrains from making any concrete comments and the gas topic has remained in the background. It was replaced by the topical and intriguing political events after the Presidential elections last year and the early Parliamentary elections last month which made Boyko Borisov a Prime Minister of Bulgaria for the third time.