Romania has been offered the option to receive 7.3 billion cubic meters of natural gas via the Nabucco project, amounting to nearly one quarter of the pipeline's planned annual capacity, news agency Mediafax reports officials of the Economy Ministry as saying Thursday.
However, the offer is premised by Nabucco pipeline being up and running before the rival South Stream project, the ministry's state secretary Tudor Serban told the Black Sea Energy and Economic Forum in Bucharest.
Romania is the first party to the Nabucco consortium to have received such an offer, he said.
Serban declined to name the country that had made the offer, and would only say that it is a state in the Caspian Sea region.
Over recent months, Romania has held talks with Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan and signed several protocols on gas delivery via the Nabucco pipeline.
The Nabucco pipeline, the construction of which will need investments of EUR8 billion, will deliver approximately 31 billion cubic meters of gas annually from the Caspian Sea to Central Europe via Turkey and Romania, bypassing Russia.
In fact, the pipeline is expected to help European countries break free from Russia's influence in the natural gas sector. Nabucco is due for completion in 2014 or 2015.
Meanwhile, the authorities in Kremlin are pressing to accelerate the development of the rival South Stream pipeline, which is seen delivering 31 billion cubic meters of Russian gas per year starting 2015.