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The Director of Overgas Inc. Svetoslav Ivanov (right) and Linden Energy President Stephen Payne sign the agreement, giving the US company a 50% stake in Bulgaria. Behind them are US Ambassador to Bulgaria Hero Mustafa, Economy Minister Kiril Petkov and Energy Minister Andrei Zhivkov.
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Linden Energy, which holds 10% of the capacity of the gas connection Bulgaria – Greece, became a partner in the Bulgarian company.
Overgas has been half-American since Thursday. The agreement, with which the American Linden Energy took 50% of the Bulgarian company, was signed on Thursday night.
Thus, the gas company moved from east to west, as until recently half of the ownership in Overgas belonged to Gazprom, but it came to a separation from the Russian company. After that, the property belonged only to Sasho Donchev.
Svetoslav Ivanov, the executive director of Overgas, said that Donchev had been in talks with various partnership companies for a long time in order to implement the strategy of the company becoming regional and going beyond the Bulgarian market. He found such a partner in the person of Linden and the owner Stephen Payne.
Ivanov says Payne has good relations and a common language with factors that can provide political and financial support for the joint venture’s projects.
Ivanov outlined three priorities in the company’s development and in the presence of the gas markets. The first is participation in a liquefied gas terminal on the Albanian coast. He was not a competitor of the Greek at Revitusa and the future one at Alexandroupolis, in which Bulgaria has a 20% share.
At the signing, Payne said they would explore the possibility of building gas interconnectors between Albania and northern Macedonia and Albania and Kosovo.
The third priority is the development of the gas distribution network in the countries of the Western Balkans. I don’t know if we will be leaders, but we want to participate in these processes, we have been building such networks for 30 years, Ivanov said.
Bulgaria is not unknown to Linden, as the company participated in the tender for reserving capacity from the gas connection between Bulgaria and Greece. Ivanov hopes that this 10% reserved capacity in the pipeline will be common and can be used by Overgas.
This would mean that the Bulgarian company would return to the gas supply business, since before the parting with Gazprom it was the only Russian representative for Bulgaria.
Overgas said in a statement that a future representative of the new company was present at the signing on Thursday. This is Matthew Bryza, a former US ambassador to Azerbaijan, who also served on Condoleezza Rice’s team when she was secretary of state.
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