Ministers from the six countries participating in the European Union-backed
Nabucco gas pipeline project are to meet in Budapest
on Jan. 26-27, the project's spokesman said Monday.
The summit, proposed by the Hungarian government last September, will bring
together ministers or possibly heads of government from Austria,
Bulgaria, Germany,
Hungary, Romania
and Turkey,
Nabucco spokesman Christian Dolezal told AFP.
Project participants insist that the current Russia-Ukraine supply crisis
underlines the importance of such a pipeline, since it would make Europe
less dependent on Russian gas.
Nabucco is a 3,400-kilometer pipeline between Turkey
and Austria
that will transport up to 31 billion cubic meters of gas each year from the Caspian
Sea to western Europe.
The pipeline has six shareholders - OMV AG (OMV.VI) of Austria,
MOL Nyrt. (MOL.BU) of Hungary,
Transgaz of Romania,
Bulgargaz of Bulgaria,
Botas of Turkey
and RWE AG (RWE.XE) of Germany.
But the project has proved slow-moving with the necessary approvals and
agreements between the countries concerned still to be signed.
Nabucco chief Reinhard Mitschek said Monday the project could finally get the
green light this year.
"We'll start work in 2010 and gas will start arriving in 2013" at Austria's
Baumgarten terminal, he said told Oe1 public radio.
Russia and Italy
have put forward a rival pipeline project of their own, called South Stream, in
which Hungary
is also involved and which the World Energy Council described as "more
promising" last June.
One of the main hurdles to Nabucco has been financing with the consortium
recently raising the cost estimate to around EUR8 billion compared with the
initial projection of EUR4.4 billion.
For Nabucco to be profitable, Europe would have to find
30 billion cubic meters of gas each year from countries such as Azerbaijan,
Turkmenistan, Iran
and Iraq.