French utility Gaz de France wants to join the European Union's flagship Nabucco gas pipeline, the French gas giant's chief operating officer, Jean-Marie Dauger, said on Friday.
The 3,300-kilometer (2,050-mile) Nabucco pipeline, scheduled for completion in 2012, currently has five shareholders, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Austria, who have long been looking for a sixth partner for the project.
"I'm not betraying any great secrets by telling you that GdF wants to become a partner in Nabucco. We could help meet the challenges facing the project,” Dauger told an international conference here.
The Nabucco pipeline is aimed at decreasing Europe's reliance on Russian gas by transporting natural gas from the Middle East and Central Asia.
Supply interruptions after recent standoffs between Russia, the world's biggest exporter of gas and a leading oil producer, and key transit countries, Ukraine and Belarus, have stoked fears in Europe of an over dependence on Russian energy sources.
Earlier, Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Guyrcsany said his country fully backed the construction of Nabucco, but not to the exclusion of Russia's alternative project, Blue Stream.
"With regard to Nabucco, I'd like to confirm Hungary's total support for the EU in its efforts to integrate its gas supply," Guyrcsany told the conference.
"It's not a question of 'Nabucco versus Blue Stream,'" he said, insisting that several new pipelines would be necessary to secure Europe's energy supply in the future.
In the past, Guyrcsany had been critical of Nabucco, arguing that it lacked both political and financial backing, unlike Moscow's Blue Stream project.
Both pipelines are to carry gas through Turkey and the Balkans to the European Union.
(AFP)