The European Union should invest at least EUR300 million in the Nabucco gas pipeline if the vast project is to succeed, Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany said Tuesday.
Speaking at the start of a special meeting of ministers and industry leaders here, Gyurcsany said that Brussels should send a signal to other investors by being the first to put up some of the financing for the EUR7.9-billion pipeline.
"The European Union should finance at least the beginning of the project to the tune of EUR200-300 million, with credit and money from its own budget," Gyurcsany said as government officials from Austria, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Egypt, Georgia, Germany, Iraq, Romania, Turkmenistan and Turkey arrived for the meeting.
Gyurcsany, hosting the so-called Nabucco summit, stressed the importance of the Nabucco project for Europe's energy security, especially in the wake of the recent energy crisis triggered by a gas pricing row between Russia and Ukraine.
Nabucco is a 3,300-kilometer pipeline between Turkey and Austria aimed at transporting up to 31 billion cubic meters of gas each year from the Caspian Sea to western Europe, bypassing Russia and Ukraine.
The pipeline currently 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.
The consortium recently raised the cost estimate to around EUR7.9 billion from an initial projection of EUR4.4 billion.