President Trump is the champion of American greatness, American companies, and American energy. Now he has a historic opportunity to land the plane in Bulgaria to secure lucrative energy trade deals and lock in strategic partnerships for generations to come.
Bulgarian leaders and businesses are hungry for exactly this kind of engagement and prosperity. They are not looking for lectures or sleepy bureaucrats; they want decisiveness and President Trump’s ambassadors are decisive, and in this case, billions are at stake.
The American LNG Opportunity: Thirty Billion Cubic Meters
Between Turkey and Greece, the United States and its partners have assembled nearly 30 billion cubic meters of LNG terminal capacity. American producers have the supply, American shipping companies have the tankers, and the world has the demand. To complete the job, we must activate the overland distribution network that carries that gas into Central Europe, and Bulgaria is Grand Central Station with its interconnectors and Vertical Gas Corridor to get it done. Used to their full potential, these energy highways can deliver American LNG into Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, all of Europe, and the world.
A worker in Mikrevo, Bulgaria, welds a pipe at the construction site of the Vertical Gas Corridor, a pipeline system connecting Greece with Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Moldova, and Ukraine on May 29, 2025. (NIKOLAY DOYCHINOV/AFP via Getty Images)
With Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle in Athens and Ambassador Tom Barrack anchoring Ankara, the Mediterranean corridor for U.S. liquefied natural gas is taking shape, but there is still an unresolved gap in Bulgaria. It is clear that that influence in the region is widening.
The Burgas Refinery: A Future American Partnership
The Burgas Refinery— the largest in the Balkans — is another and equally compelling opportunity, producing roughly 195,000 barrels per day or around $3 billion annually. Closing a deal for a strategic partnership with U.S. energy producers, Burgas becomes a long-term destination for American crude, providing Bulgaria with a dependable, market-priced supply and giving U.S. exporters a guaranteed foothold in a region that has historically depended on Russian feedstocks that pay no tax.
The Lukoil Neftohim Burgas AD oil refinery near Burgas, Bulgaria, on March 14, 2024. (Michaela Vatcheva/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
A seamless thoroughfare to the Mediterranean of partners and friends would extend that reach across the Black Sea region, improving fuel quality and supply security for a broad swath of Southeastern Europe and eventually all of Eurasia.
Nuclear Collaboration: Westinghouse and Energy Independence
The nuclear option has already begun in Bulgaria as they are moving forward with the deployment of a Westinghouse AP1000 reactor — American technology and the gold standard for safe and efficient civilian nuclear power. For Bulgaria, successful completion of this project means energy independence from malicious actors for the next half-century. For the United States, this means the beginning of potentially billions of dollars in high-value exports contracts and thousands of globally skilled engineering and manufacturing American jobs.
Transactions of this scale and complexity do not close themselves. They require sustained attention, relationship management, and the kind of credibility that only a Senate-confirmed Trump ambassador carries. The time for diplomatic cowardice, like we’ve seen in past administrations, has long passed, President Trump demands action and energy dominance.
Appoint Pro-Energy Now
Diplomacy is, at its core, a contact sport. The deal-making that advances American interests happens in rooms — over tables, over meals, in margins of ministerial meetings — and it happens because the right person showed up, earned trust, and was empowered to commit. Athens has that person; Ankara has that person; Sofia does not.
The appointment needed is not a career bureaucrat content to manage the status quo. The moment calls for a dealmaker: someone who understands that the best agreements are genuine partnerships, who can articulate American interests without condescension, and who has the tenacity to push complex, multi-party transactions across the finish line.
American’s energy is ready, and American companies are already bidding. Bulgaria is ready, and the infrastructure is in place. The billions of dollars in trade in LNG, in offtake agreements, in crude supply contracts, and in nuclear technology exports are sitting on the table. What is missing is Trump’s “American First” person in Sofia who can pull it all together.
Aaron J. Masaitis is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps with multiple deployments supporting U.S. forces and leading diplomatic engagements across the world. He is the CEO of a small investment and real estate company in Tampa, Florida, and a Trump 2016 campaign volunteer.