As U.S. President Joe Biden announced a ban on imports of Russian oil and gas, Bulgaria's Prime Minister Kiril Petkov said he would request his country be omitted from any international effort to restrict exports of Russian energy. 

Bulgaria is almost entirely reliant on Russian gas and oil. Gazprom supplies nearly all the country's gas, and 60 percent of the nation's oil comes via Bulgaria's only refinery, owned by Lukoil, another Russian energy firm. Lukoil is a private business, but is the second largest of all Russian companies, after Gazprom. 

"Bulgaria would support all kinds of measures, because we are really against the war, but these two [oil and gas], maybe we would ask for an exception... We do not have current alternatives right now, we are too dependent," Petkov told Reuters. 

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Petkov explained how Bulgaria is trying to diversify its energy supply, including working on a deal to import Liquified National Gas (LNG) from Azerbaijan. 

Bulgaria has been a European Union member since 2007, and a NATO member since 2004. 

Petkov said the country would continue to peg its currency, the lev, to the euro in the hope of maintaining the country's plan of joining the eurozone in 2024. 

"So far, we are staying with the current target date of 2024 and we hope that we would be able to meet it," he said.