SOFIA: Bulgaria's sole underground gas storage site will be expanded to allow the country to use more than 5 million cubic metres per day from it to improve preparations for any potential gas supply disruptions.
Bulgaria can currently use 4.2 million cubic metres a day from the storage facility near the village of Chiren in the northwest of the country, while its daily consumption is 10-11 million cubic metres.
"We will begin the expansion of the Chiren gas depot, which (the expansion) has been discussed for decades but never started, next week," Prime Minister Boiko Borisov said on Tuesday.
"We would not be buying as much expensive gas but would fill the depot up in the summer."
Bulgaria also plans to double the capacity of the Chiren storage at a total cost of more than 200 million euros ($227.70 million) in a part-European Union funded project.
Bulgaria is one of the EU countries most exposed to possible gas supply cuts.
It meets almost all of its current gas needs of between about 3 and 4 billion cubic metres a year with imports from Russia's Gazprom.
In 2009, a spat between Ukraine and Russia left Bulgaria without gas imports for two weeks.
Last year, the Black Sea state and several other eastern European countries reported slight declines in shipments from Russia.
Aiming at reducing Sofia's dependence on Russian gas, Bulgaria has been saying it needs to build gas links with neighbours Greece, Romania, Turkey and Serbia.
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