site.btaPresident Radev: If Goal Was to Prevent Disruption in Refinery's Operations, Special Administrator Should Have Been Appointed by Now

President Rumen Radev posted on his official Facebook profile Wednesday that “the excuses of the government that they are waiting for the promulgation of the amendments they adopted to the Act on Administrative Regulation of Economic Activities Associated with Oil and Petroleum Products in order to protect the public interest by appointing a special commercial administrator are untenable.”

“If the real goal is to prevent a disruption in the refinery's operations, a fuel crisis and an increase in prices, they should have appointed the special commercial administrator by now and taken over the operational management of the aforementioned activities, immediately after the sanctions were announced on October 23,” the post added.

According to Radev, the government has full legal grounds to do so. “The institution of the special commercial administrator is regulated by a law adopted in 2023, which also provides for guarantees against possible abuses and arbitrariness, adopted in other European countries in a similar situation, in order to minimize the risk of future financial claims against the state,” he wrote.

“In recent weeks, fears and a sense of urgency have been persistently instilled, accompanied by fast legal changes that repeal existing protective measures. Is this not the real goal of the legal changes, who has an interest in this,” Radev asked in the post.

Last week in two readings held during a single sitting, the National Assembly expanded the powers of the figure of the special commercial administrator of a critical infrastructure facility by adopting amendments to the Act on Administrative Regulation of Economic Activities Associated with Oil and Petroleum Products. The amendments were prompted by plans to appoint a special commercial administrator to oversee Russian oil company Lukoil's assets in Bulgaria, as the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control expanded its sanctions on Russia on October 22.

On October 31, Parliament temporarily banned the export and intra-Community supply of petroleum products, mainly diesel and aviation fuel, to European Union member states.

Parliament ordered the State Agency State Reserve to conduct an inspection of the quantities stored under the Crude Oil and Petroleum Products Stocks Act. Government officials sought to reassure the public on Tuesday that the country has sufficient fuel reserves and that national security will not be jeopardized by upcoming US sanctions on Lukoil.