Bulgaria claims Azerbaijan has stopped gas supply until January 11

Bulgargaz EAD, the Bulgarian gas state company, has received notification that Azerbaijan suspended gas supplies to Bulgaria for unspecified reasons from January 7 to 11.

Bulgargaz reported that Bulgargaz has sourced replacement gas volumes from Botas in Turkey.

The company said that it did not incur additional costs to replace the natural gas, nor did the outage affect the market for natural gas in the area.

A source in the industry said that "an issue" was at BP's Alpha Platform at the Shah Deniz Gas Field.

BP Azerbaijan announced on Friday it had suspended work at the Shah Deniz Alfa platform (SDA), after detecting a problem with the subsea condensate line connecting the platform to the Sangachal Terminal.

A spokeswoman said that "for operational reasons, production operations and export operations were suspended from the SDA Platform and the platform was safely shut down... We are working to solve the problem and return normal operations as soon as possible."

Bulgaria stopped receiving Russian Gas in April 2022, after refusing to pay via a scheme that involved rouble payment stipulated by Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Azerbaijan is supplying more than one billion cubic meters (bcm), while the remainder of its gas needs are met by other sources. (Reporting and editing by David Goodman, Nailia Bagirova, Vladimir Soldatkin)

(source: Reuters)