Bulgaria Cuts Gazprom Loose as Azerbaijani Gas Flows Through Southern Corridor

Bulgaria began taking natural gas from Azerbaijan through the Trans Adriatic Pipeline in January 2026, formally ending Gazprom's grip on a market it had supplied exclusively for more than twenty years. Prime Minister Borissow declared "complete diversification" after the first deliveries cleared the Southern Gas Corridor, closing a chapter that saw Bulgaria source up to 95% of its gas from Russia as recently as 2022. The break matters for regional flows, not just Bulgarian politics. Sofia historically bought 80% of its gas under Gazprom contracts running through 2022. New interconnector links, particularly with Serbia, now give Bulgaria direct access to output from Shah Deniz-2, the Caspian field that pushes roughly 16 billion cubic meters a year through the Southern Gas Corridor to Greece, Bulgaria and Italy. The backdrop is tight. European storage stood at 36.3% of capacity on May 16, down from 43.64% on the same date in 2025, according to AGSI data. Russia supplied just 6% of EU pipeline gas in 2025, against 40% in 2021, and Brussels has a full import ban in place by end-2027. That makes Azerbaijan's volumes — modest in absolute terms — disproportionately significant as a politically clean replacement barrel. Gazprom's position has deteriorated sharply regardless of the Bulgarian loss. The company's 2023 gas production fell 13% year-on-year to 359 billion cubic meters, down from 498 bcm in 2018, and revenue dropped to 8.5 trillion rubles from 11.7 trillion the previous year. Serbia secured Russian supply simultaneously via Balkan Stream, but Croatia offset 2.82 bcm of Gazprom volumes through its new Krk LNG terminal, which carries 2.6 bcm of annual capacity. TTF closed at $49.50 per megawatt-hour Monday, having traded a tight EUR 44-49 range through early May. The constraint driving that floor is Qatar: the March 4 Strait of Hormuz closure has cut 12-14% of EU LNG imports, squeezing a storage refill that was already running behind last year's pace. U.S. LNG has partially absorbed the gap, rising to around 58% of European LNG imports — roughly triple the 2021 share. Azerbaijan's pipeline capacity remains narrow next to Europe's 140 bcm annual LNG import volume recorded in 2025. The EU is studying whether existing Russian transit pipelines through Ukraine could carry Azerbaijani gas, preserving the infrastructure while sidestepping Gazprom purchases. Ukraine's Naftogaz has confirmed it would accept Azeri volumes, while explicitly ruling out any arrangement involving Gazprom. Norway still anchors European supply, accounting for nearly a third of total imports in 2025. The U.S. provided 29% of EU gas imports in the first quarter of 2026, nearly matching Norway's 30% — a structural shift that would have been unrecognisable before 2022. Serbia's President Vučić is due in Baku this month for energy cooperation talks. Bulgaria's daily Azerbaijani intake doubled to two million cubic meters in 2025, with further volume increases under negotiation. Whether the EU hits 80% storage by November 1 will ultimately depend on how quickly Azerbaijan can scale deliveries to offset the Qatari shortfall — and whether TTF holds below EUR 50 long enough to keep injection economics workable into autumn.