In the early afternoon of January 21, the 16th day of the gas crisis, Minister of Economy and Energy Petar Dimitrov signed a written order to stop the restriction regime for gasdeliveries. “We move on to normal deliveries,” he announced at a special joined conferencewith the Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev. The crisis committee at the Ministry of Economy will continue itsoperations to prepare the final analyses for the losses the business and citizens bore due to the gas crisis and to stipulatethe way compensations will be sought.

Bulgaria, together with the othercountries affected by the crisis will seeklegal compensations, Stanishev said. He also said that the country will seekrecoup of losses through deliveries of additional amounts of the blue fuel with the proper discounts. For the aim the Ministry of Economy and Energy, Bulgargas and Bulgartransgas have to collect the whole range of information about the losses in the shortest terms. The estimated evaluations will be presented tothe partners from the EU and thecourtiers that started the crisis, Stanishev said. Dimitrov stated that during the crisis Bulgaria did not receive 123.8 billion cubic metres of natural gas and that nearly 170 million levs (more than 85million Euro) were the losses for the economy, according to the informationthat was submitted to the Crisis committeefrom the affected companies.

Stanishev said the government undertook “immediate and straight forwarded activities in a sensible and responsible manner” as a response to the crisis. “The most important is the in the first days of the crisis we did not allow thepanic and hysteria to possess us, however cynic efforts were made to presentthe situation as hopeless and dramatic,” Stanishev stated. The government worked to limit the dependence of Bulgaria of gas deliveries, he said, adding that, “We are working on other means of diversification of deliveries … we have submitted a list of projects at the European Commission in order to support gas independence of Bulgaria.”

It is still uncertain who will pay compensations to Bulgarian companies and he said the government received aletter from the Russian company Gazprom which blamed Kiev for the crisis and recommended asking for compensation from Ukraine, said Dimitrov. A day before the deliveries fromUkraine to Bulgaria were resumed, gasfrom Greece came due to a short-terms even-day contract. In the meanwhile, the director of Bulgargaz, Dimar Gogov, negotiated with the Turkish company Botas for 500,000 cubic metres of liquefied gas to be delivered if needed.