South Stream Revived?
[source]
You can’t make this stuff up:
Bulgaria is ready to issue all the necessary permits for the construction of the South Stream pipeline, according to Prime Minister Boyko Borisov. He said it will up to Gazprom whether the pipeline is built or not.
We would not have been surprised if Bulgaria would have finally given Brussels the finger and decided to act alone. After all, pipelines last for decades, the anger of a faceless Brussels bureaucrat for weeks. And Europe is going to need Russian gas in the future anyway, so Bulgaria can earn possible fines imposed now back in the future.
What does (pleasantly) surprise us is:
Borisov said he has the full support and understanding of the European Union and that Bulgaria is not in the wrong and should not suffer financial consequences for stopping the project, the Bulgarian news agency BGNES reports.
So Brussels admits that it bluffed and overplayed its hand with its silly ‘Third Energy Package‘ and all and now it stands exposed as the weak-willed spineless idiots that they are. Putin won again. The trouble for Brussels is: Russians usually stick to their word. On December 1, Moscow agreed with Ankara to build ‘Turk Stream’ instead. Perhaps in his heart, Putin would like to back pedal, but he is a man of his word. And… he noticed that he could buy Turkey into his SCO-alliance and deal the West a crushing blow. Who needs Assad-Syria (and the Tarsus naval base) if you can tie the coming leader of the Middle East into your alliance? The sun sets in the west and apparently the West sinks with it.
Putin will possibly let the Euro’s simmer for a while and increase the price for building South Stream after all, after a talk about Crimea, sanctions, Mistral helicopter carrier, Ukraine-NATO, etc., etc. Perhaps a smaller pipeline to Turkey will be built as well.
Or perhaps South Stream will never be built, after the Europeans humiliated the Russians too much, on orders of Washington.
What a mess.
[rt.com] – Bulgaria ready to issue South Stream permits
In the ‘unlikely’ case that Hollande will fail as president, he can always apply to play a walk-on part in a Borat movie, with his new Kazakh coat. And if not, at least he won’t catch a cold on his scooter while sneaking out of the Elysee palace to pay his mistress a visit.
DeepResource 
