As the European Union struggles to achieve a common energy security policy, the Socialist-led government of Hungary has broken with the bloc by joining forces with Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, to extend a pipeline from Turkey to Hungary.
The joint project would compete directly with an EU plan to construct its own pipeline to reduce dependence on Russian energy supplies.
Starting in Turkey and crossing Bulgaria and Romania, the extended Gazprom pipeline, called Blue Stream, would follow almost the same route as the EU project, cost just as much and be finished at about the same time.
The immediate advantage to Hungary in joining the Russian project was unclear, because Budapest could end up contributing to the construction of competing pipelines.
The opposition in Hungary claims that Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, who leads the former Communist Party hand has close ties to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, supports Gazprom’s strategy to expand its influence in central and southeastern Europe.
The Hungarian Economy Ministry, however, says that the country has ambitions to become a major energy hub in central Europe and that the Blue Stream project, with access to more Russian natural gas, would further this aim.
Gyurcsany said in an interview that because the EU project, known as Nabucco, had experienced significant delays and could face further problems and the Russian plan was more realistic.
When completed, at the earliest in 2011, the EUR5 billion or $6.6 billion, Nabucco project would benefit all the bloc’s 27 members and carry at least 30 billion cubic meters, or 1 trillion cubic feet, of natural gas a year to the Union. Currently, more than a quarter of the Union’s gas or 150 billion cubic meters, is imported annually from Russia.
(International Herald Tribune, 13/03/2007)