Partners in the Nabucco gas pipeline project have ironed out differences on selecting a sixth partner and could name the winner as soon as this week, a senior Bulgarian gas official said yesterday.
The five signatory companies to the pipeline project – Austria’s OMV, Hungary’s MOL, Romania’s Transgaz, Bulgaria’s Bulgargaz and Turkey’s Botas – have been in talks with Germany’s RWE and France’s Gaz de France to choose a sixth partner.
“There is a big progress with the process. Up to now, there is no indication about any hurdles,” Lyubomir Denchev, chief executive director of Bulgaria’s gas monopoly Bulgargaz Holding, told Reuters in an interview.
Asked whether that meant that there was an agreement among the partners about the sixth investor, Denchev said: “Yes, it looks so. The procedure will be completed any moment.”
A Turkish Energy Ministry official said last month that the partners in Nabucco favored RWE as the sixth partner. Turkey has said it prefers the German utility over Gaz de France.
The 3,300-kilometer pipeline is a key plank in European Union plans to diversify gas supplies away from Russia after Moscow cut off supplies to Ukraine following a political row last year.
Bulgargaz, which makes most of its money by transiting Russian gas to Turkey, Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, will also be a partner in a pipeline project by Gazprom and Italy’s ENI to carry gas to Central Europe below the Black Sea via Bulgaria.
(Reuters)