European projects to ease dependence on Russian natural gas imports shouldn't aim to use Iranian gas for the time being, given the difficult international political situation in the Islamic republic, a top U.S. official said Wednesday.
"We don't think Iran should be part of the Southern Corridor projects at this point," said Richard Morningstar, U.S. special envoy for Eurasian energy, during a conference in Brussels.
The European Union wants to open a link with Central Asia and the Caucasus countries, called the Southern Corridor, to tap their vast gas resources, and potentially those of other countries such as Iran, Iraq or Egypt. The 3,300 kilometer long Nabucco pipeline project would be instrumental to this goal.
Europe imports a quarter of its gas from Russia and 80% of that flows through Ukraine, which is facing a deep economic crisis and is struggling to pay its gas bill. Last January, a price dispute between Ukraine and Russia crippled supplies to the E.U. for weeks.
Morningstar said gas from Iraq could instead be a possibility, but the concrete exploitation of high volumes of that country's gas resources for European import is "easier said than done," given the unclear political situation in the area.