After Bulgaria (see EDM, January 24), Romania might unnecessarily miss its own chance to explore a promising shale gas potential in partnership with the Chevron Corporation. Unlike the Bulgarian situation, Romanian protests against shale gas exploration are peripheral, outside the political system, and not backed... MORE

Interest is growing among Western gas producers in Azerbaijan, transit companies, and European importers in the Trans-Anatolia project for Caspian gas to Europe. Initiated by Baku as an Azerbaijani-Turkish project, the Trans-Anatolia Gas Pipeline (Turkic acronym: TANAP) is planned to run from the Georgian-Turkish border... MORE

Interested parties are considering joining, in one way or another, the Azerbaijani-Turkish Trans-Anatolia Gas Pipeline project (Turkic acronym: TANAP) across Turkey to the European Union’s border. Some of the same interested parties are competing against each other to provide a continuation route for TANAP into... MORE

On March 30 on his maiden visit to Moscow, Bulgarian Economy and Energy Minister Delyan Dobrev struck a poor deal with Russia. Under imperative instructions from his prime minister, Boyko Borissov, Dobrev tentatively promised a final investment decision by November 15, 2012 regarding the Bulgarian... MORE

The results of the March 2012 national survey by the Independent Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (an entity funded by the United States) reveal that the number of Belarusians who trust President Lukashenka has risen to 34.5 percent, which is 10 percent higher than... MORE

The Ukraine-EU association and free trade agreement will not be concluded this year, Kyiv has admitted after only part of the text of the agreement was initialed in Brussels on March 30. Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin and EU negotiator Miroslav Lajcak initialed the... MORE

On March 30, Lithuania and Japan’s Hitachi Corporation initialed the concession agreement to build a Baltic regional nuclear power plant at Visaginas in Lithuania. The Lithuanian government had selected Hitachi and its subsidiary, Hitachi-General Electric of the US, as the strategic investor for this project,... MORE

Bulgaria scrapped plans to build its second 2,000-megawatt Belene nuclear power plant (Belene NPP) on the Danube River (Trud, Capital, Dnevnik, BNT, March 28). The Belene NPP is the second Bulgarian-Russian energy project that Sofia quit in the last four months. In December 2011, Sofia... MORE

Croatia’s First Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister, Radimir Cacic, held talks with the Russian government and companies in Moscow on March 25-26, soliciting sweeping Russian investments in Croatia (“Breakthrough of ‘Putin’s empire’ in Croatia?” Vecernji List, March 28).The initiative originates this time in Zagreb,... MORE

On March 25, between 2,000 and 4,000 people took part in a demonstration in Minsk to mark “Freedom Day,” the 94th anniversary of the formation of the Belarusian National Republic (BNR) in 1918. The rally had been sanctioned by the Minsk City Council and was... MORE