Gazprom has Bulgaria firmly in its clutches

At the end of January the parliament in Sofia voted by an absolute majority to ban shale gas mining in Bulgaria. The vote meets environmental activists half way, but that was hardly the reason for the ban, writes author Edvin Sugarev on opinion portal Svobodata: "I honestly can't imagine that a couple of well-organised and no doubt well-paid protests against shale gas produced the consensus between government and opposition. ... I believe the MPs only reached an agreement because rock-hard geopolitical interests are behind the deal - in this case Russian interests. I would even go as far as to claim that with their vote the MPs secured Gazprom's monopoly in our country, along with the prospect of Bulgaria having to pay more than most other countries in Europe for its natural gas."

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