The European Commission has reduced the amount of proposed funding for the Nabucco gas pipeline project to EUR200 million from EUR250 million, although increasing overall proposed funding for energy investments as part of a plan to stimulate the economy, a document seen by Dow Jones Newswires showed Thursday.
The commission has also cut proposed financing for carbon capture and storage projects to EUR200 million for each of the five countries included, down from EUR250 million previously. It has added an Italian CCS project and funding for a gas pipeline connecting Algeria to Italy to the list of those that would get European Union funding, the document showed. Both of these last projects would get EUR100 million.
CCS is a new, experimental technology to cut greenhouse gas emissions by capturing CO2 and storing it underground, or in deep saline acquifers. Nabucco is a 3,300-kilometer pipeline project which should bring Central Asian gas all the way to Austria. The commission considers it a priority to differentiate gas supplies away from Russia, but concerns have emerged about the real availability of gas to fill the pipeline.
The commission also proposed to double funding for a gas connection between France and Belgium to EUR200 million.
The European Commission proposed earlier this year a first list of projects that would get a total of EUR5 billion funding to offer some stimulus to the European economy. The first list included EUR3.5 billion for energy infrastructure - gas and electricity networks, as well as CCS and offshore wind - and EUR1 billion for Internet broadband.
According to the document, the commission increased its proposed overall investment in energy to EUR3.75 billion.
A large majority of the 27 European Union member countries and the European Parliament will have to approve the commission proposal before it can be implemented.
"If everything goes well, (...) we can conclude at the beginning of May," but the list could change again in the course of the negotiation, Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said during a press conference Thursday. He had participated in a meeting of E.U. energy ministers to discuss the document.
Many member countries, including Italy and France, had expressed their doubts about the first version of the list, saying funding wasn't properly geographically spread.