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"Romania is robbing us of a piece of the sea", leads popular Bulgarian daily Standart, referring to the "17 square kilometres" of the maritime border between Bulgaria and Romania that Bucharest claims is part of its own territorial waters. In late February, the American groups ExxonMobil and Austrian OMV Petrom announced a major discovery of natural gas here.
Bulgaria’s foreign minister, Nikolai Mladenov, stresses that the two countries have been discussing the territorial delimitation of the Black Sea for over 20 years. "The subject does not constitute any problem in bilateral relations between the two countries," he said, as quoted by the Bulgarian press, which nevertheless expresses "surprise" that the dispute should suddenly crop up.
On the other side of the Danube, this "timing" comes as no surprise to Adevărul -
The part of the continental shelf in dispute is that which is expected to carry the South Stream pipeline [project led by Russia]. If the outcome is favourable for Bucharest, Romania would gain a few square metres of the Turkish continental shelf, which would be an advantage in the event that the Nabucco project [the rival South Stream pipeline, supported by the EU] is decided on.
Romania’s chief diplomat, Cristian Diaconescu, wants to calm things down -
Nobody should get upset or angry. These are areas of national interest for both states, and these issues have to be resolved, because problems of exploitation and concessions may suddenly come up.
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