The project company for the abandoned South Stream gas pipeline project has valuable assets which Bulgaria can use in view of plans to build a gas hub on its territory, Energy Minister Temenuzhka Petkova has said.

"This joint-stock company owns assets: documents related to the environmental impact assessment, a detailed territorial plan, a technical project that has been prepared for the most part,” Petkova said on Nova TV channel on Friday in response to a query by a member of parliament about expenditures at the project company.

Nastimir Ananiev, a MP from the Reformist Bloc, has argued that estimated expenditure of about BGN 400,000 per month was "staggering" for a project company that used Bulgarian state funding but has had no activity whatsoever since Russia dropped the pipeline project in December 2014 over objections from the European Commission.

“It may be useful to Bulgaria in view of our concept to build a gas distribution center in Bulgaria because the routes, which can be used to transport gas are not different from those which we had already considered and approved,” Petkova added, calling for pragmatic approach.

Bulgaria’s Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Donchev said in late March that the project for building a natural gas hub on the country’s Black Sea coast was expected to be finalized in a month and a half. The project was being drafted together with the European Commission in great detail from a technical, legal and economic point of view in order to make sure that the development model will be sustainable and there would be no risk to launch an infringement procedure over it, Donchev said at the time.

State-owned Bulgarian Energy Holding (BEH) could sell its assets in South Stream project company it owns equally with Russia’s Gazprom, or they can be very useful for Bulgaria in other ways, Petkova said without elaborating.

BEH has already cut the salaries of the remaining four Bulgarian employees on the JV’s payroll and currently they are close to the average levels in Bulgaria’s energy sector, Petkova added, addressing the core concern voiced by Ananiev in his query.

“At present, six employees work in the project company: two on the Russian side and four on the Bulgarian one,” Petkova said. She added that the Bulgarian government had moved fast to cut expenditure at South Stream project company.

The company had 34 employees as of 31 December  2014, 30 days after Gazprom abandoned the project designed to carry Russian gas to Europe beneath the Black Sea with the pipline coming ashore in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian side had moved to cut costs in the new circumstances, reducing the number of Bulgarian employees in the company to 19 as of September 2015.