Bulgaria flatly rejected a Russian request to renegotiate its gas contract yesterday, as countries across the old Soviet bloc sought ways to reduce their energy dependence on Moscow.
Gazprom, Russia's state-owned gas monopoly, made the request to Sofia just days after cutting supplies to Ukraine over a price dispute, a move which sent deliveries to neighbouring European countries plummeting as pressure fell in key transit pipelines. The Russian company, which supplies almost all of Bulgaria's gas, asked the country to pay directly for all deliveries, rather than receiving a discount on some supplies in return for pumping gas on to neighbouring Greece, Macedonia, and Turkey.
"[ Gazprom's] offer is unacceptable," said Bulgaria's economy minister Rumen Ovcharov. "We see no reasons and no conditions that could lead to a review" of a deal that is due to expire in 2010, he said.
Despite Moscow's assurances, the cut in supplies to Ukraine caused a significant fall in deliveries to Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Serbia and Bosnia. But as supplies returned to normal, governments began discussing ways to reduce reliance on energy that analysts say is now the Kremlin's strongest foreign policy tool.
"The conflict has shown that Russia's energy trade is politically motivated," said Andrei Illarionov, President Vladimir Putin's former top economic adviser. "This can make Russia anything but a 'reliable global energy supplier'."
Like Ukraine, Georgia turned away from Moscow after a recent peaceful revolution, and subsequently suffered a hike in its Gazprom bill; Moldova, another poor ex-Soviet state that resents Russian interference, had the gas turned off this week.
A decision to build an under-sea pipeline taking gas from Russia to Germany - bypassing Poland and the Baltic states - is seen as an expensive way of getting energy to key markets while bypassing some of Moscow's prickliest critics.
Some analysts say Russia chose the route - rather than proceeding with a cheaper, shorter, long-planned pipeline across Poland - to allow the option of reducing or cutting gas to central Europe without endangering supplies to powerful allies farther west.
But Poland is used to unpleasant surprises from its Russian energy partners. Relations soured when it was discovered that the fibre-optic cables inside a major pipeline currently carrying Russian gas across Poland to the West did not simply monitor the flow, but could actually carry a reported 37 million telephone calls a second, something Gazprom had neglected to mention to Warsaw.
The company's dispute with Ukraine brought a swift response from Poland. "I've instructed the economy minister to urgently prepare investment decisions allowing us to diversify gas supplies," said Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, adding that Poland may build a liquid gas terminal on the Baltic Sea.
But Soviet-era infrastructure makes diversification difficult. Russia's controversial takeover of most of the Yukos oil firm forced the company to sell its refinery in Lithuania, the only one in the Baltic region.
But even if, as most Lithuanians hope, the facility does not fall to Moscow, the Kremlin's hand is still strong: the oil refined there comes straight from Russia.
