U.S. investors eye strategic Bulgarian storage filled with Russian gas
Two American financiers have approached Bulgarian authorities to discuss a possible investment in a state-owned underground storage filled mostly with Russian natural gas, according to five people familiar with the matter.
Led by Stephen P. Lynch, a Florida financier who has been trying to buy a gas pipeline linking Russia to Germany, and another U.S. investor, Fei Wang, the group is considering ways to participate in a multi-million-euro government plan aimed at doubling the capacity of Bulgaria's sole underground gas storage, known as Chiren, the people familiar with the matter said.
Allied with Brad Parscale, the group would like to harness additional storage capacity at Chiren to transform Bulgaria into a gas hub serving parts of Eastern Europe, the people said.
Storage sites are strategic assets in the gas industry, allowing operators to manage big seasonal swings in demand and capitalize on price fluctuations: buying gas when prices are low and releasing it when they are higher.
With or without U.S. investors, Chiren could play a critical role in the coming years as Greece, Serbia, Hungary and other countries in Eastern Europe debate whether to keep buying gas from Russia or increase imports from other suppliers, including the United States.
Lynch and Wang are scheduled to meet with top government officials in Sofia this week to discuss how they could obtain recent data on Chiren and conduct an evaluation, the people familiar with the matter said.
An aide to Bulgaria's Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov did not respond to questions on the planned meeting and talks with the Americans.
Industry sources described the talks as exploratory, saying no deal was certain. They also said Parscale had a backseat role in the preliminary phase of talks but would help provide connections to U.S. energy companies if the project materialized.
Lynch stirred controversy in Europe earlier this year when, amid negotiations between the U.S. and Russia to broker a peace deal in Ukraine, he sought to restore the flow of Russian gas through one of the Nord Stream pipelines running under the Baltic Sea into Germany.
Both German and EU authorities have made clear they would oppose such an initiative.
Lynch's new energy project in Chiren comes amid tension between the European Commission, which has announced plans to eliminate imports of Russian gas after 2027, and several East European countries that have been purchasing growing volumes of the Russian fuel in recent quarters and saying they intend to keep doing so.
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