South Stream Will Deal with Logging? Mind the horns!

Bulgaria’s Executive Forestry Agency had established an easement on January 21, 2015 on 221.672 decares of State forests to a legal entity “for the operation, construction and repair of underground gas pipeline.” The forests are located near the Black Sea city of Varna, but the plots have not been specified.

The entity shall pay some compensation amount, which is not indicated in the order, signed by the Agency’s Executive Director Tony Krastev.

Against that, the entity becomes the owner of the wood on the lots on which the easement is established while “the logging and the disposal of wood are organized at its own expense.”

Bivol’s attempts to reach EFA to clarify what the legal entity, the properties and the compensation are were unsuccessful. It is clear, however that there is no other underground gas pipeline in the region, except the now-defunct “South Stream”.

The deadline to appeal the order has not yet expired.

An investigation of Bivol revealed last year that the State has sold cheaply hundreds of decares of forest to South Stream. Members of the right-wing Reformist Bloc stirred election campaign noise on the subject and approached the prosecution, but once in power they went silent and nobody has done anything to annul the deal whose legal basis has been eliminated with the termination of the project.

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