Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has approved German energy firm RWE as the sixth partner in the EU-backed Nabucco gas pipeline project, an official at the prime minister’s office said yesterday.
A decision on RWE’s partnership was also due this week from Turkish state pipeline company Botas, a stakeholder in the Nabucco project.
The –4.6 billion pipeline is designed to pass via Turkey and the Balkans to Austria and is a key plank in the European Union’s plans to reduce its dependence on Russian gas imports.
But several delays have hampered the pipeline, including the selection of a sixth partner.
Turkey had indicated previously that it backed RWE over Gaz de France as the sixth partner, after France passed a bill making it a crime to deny that Armenians suffered a genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks in 1915-1916. Ankara denies that the killings were a systematic genocide.
Turkey delayed its selection of a sixth partner in the consortium while settling administrative issues at Botas.
Setback
In a possible fresh setback for Nabucco, Russian President Vladimir Putin last Friday signed an agreement with Bulgaria securing the new European Union member’s participation in a rival –10 billion pipeline project.
The Nabucco consortium is equally owned by oil and gas companies in the transit countries, which are Austria’s OMV, Hungary’s MOL, Romania’s Transgaz, Bulgaria’s Bulgargaz and Turkey’s Botas