Bulgarian Finance Minister Simeon Djankov has reacted strongly to Russia's increased claim against Bulgaria's National Electric Company over the country abandoning the Belene NPP project.
On Tuesday, Rosatom subsidiary Atomstroyexport increased its claim to EUR 1 B. The case of Bulgaria having to reimburse Atomstroyexport for scrapping plans to build a second Nuclear Power Plant in the Danube town of Belene is tried by the International Court of Arbitration in Paris.
Russia's state nuclear company Atomstroyexport – which is technically supposed to build Bulgaria's Belene NPP – is facing severe shortages, according to a freshly leaked diplomatic cable of the US ambassador in Moscow.
The cable by John Beyrle, US Ambassador to Russia who was the US Ambassador to Bulgaria before going to Moscow, dated April 3, 2009, was released Thursday by WikiLeaks and their Bulgarian partner Bivol.bg.
Bulgarians "risk being cold" this winter if the government did not move forward with the Russian energy projects. This is what Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin said, off-the-record, to his Bulgarian counterpart, Boyko Borisov, during the summit in Gdansk in September, 2009. The tone of the sentence in question is not clear, we cannot judge if it was threatening enough, but obviously it seriously impressed Borisov in order for him to report it in a timely manner and for Putin’s words to find their place in the classified documents of the American diplomacy.
Russian nuclear power engineering company Atomstroyexport has advised its owner, state power corporation Rosatom, to drop Bulgaria's Belene nuclear power project, French daily La Tribune reported, citing a letter that Atomstroyexport sent to its parent.
Rosatom told Dnevnik it would not comment on the letter as it was an internal document and the company was yet to decide whether to exit the project. The proposed withdrawal would be considered a possibility only if Rosatom failed to sign its 12th consecutive agreement with Bulgaria, the company said.
Bulgarian Parliament Chair Tsacheva has made promising hints about the fate of the Belene nuclear power plant. Photo by BGNES
Bulgarian will for sure build its second nuclear power plant at Belene, Parliament Chair Tsetska Tsacheva has declared.
FRANKFURT (Dow Jones) - German utility RWE AG Wednesday said it has terminated a joint venture agreement with Bulgaria's state-owned National Electricity Co., or NEK, due to problems with the financing of a nuclear power plant that was planned to be built near the town of Belene.
"We have terminated the joint venture agreement with NEK today because of problems financing the project," said Stephanie Schunck, spokeswoman for RWE's power generation unit RWE Power.
SOFIA, Nov 18 (Reuters) - French power giant GDF Suez said on Tuesday it would decide whether to share a stake in a Bulgarian nuclear project with RWE after examining a deal agreed between the German utility and Sofia.
The Bulgarian government last month chose RWE to become a strategic partner for a 49 percent stake in the planned Belene plant and gave the option to split the stake with the second-listed bidder, Belgian Electrabel, owned by GDF Suez.
Bulgaria's sole nuclear power plant at Kozloduy on the Danube River said on November 14 that it paid back early a $52.5 million loan to Russia's state-owned Roseximbank, which it took to upgrade its two working 1000MW reactors.
The reason for the early repayment of the loan, due in 2021, was avoiding currency risks, the plant said, as quoted by website mediapool.bg. The loan was denominated in US dollars, while its revenue was in leva and euro, the plant operator said.
Sofia. Russian company Atomstroyexport, which was picked to build Bulgaria’s nuclear power plant in the Danube town of Belene, said it has signed an annex with national power utility NEK to supply the corpus, steam generator and the turbine for the plant’s first block, as the online English edition of Dnenvik Daily reported.
The Bulgarian party was tight-lipped on the matter.
Sofia. German company RWE will from now on decide whether to grant the investment promised.
The signing of the shareholding contract for Belene nuclear power plant through which German company RWE will gain 49% of the future plant's stakes, was postponed. Instead of end-October 2008 when the last deadline expired, the paper will most likely be endorsed in December 2008, the project's main investor National Electricity Company (NEC) said, The Banker Weekly reported.
