Industry and Energy

Industry and Energy

Nabucco agreement due next week

12 May 2009 09:26 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Rashad Suleymanov â€“ APA-Economics. Turkey and the European Union are to sign a key agreement next month to allow the construction of a pipeline that will transfer gas from the Caspian basin and the Middle East to Europe, a report said yesterday.

The agreement, to be signed in Ankara on June 25, represents a major boost to the EUâ€™s ill-starred Nabucco pipeline project, which is intended to transport natural gas to Europe from central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East, and is the key to breaking the Kremlin’s stranglehold over Europe’s gas imports.

"This is a complete breakthrough. The Turks have accepted our terms. There is no conditionality," The Guardian quoted a senior EU official saying.

The Turkish government has been driving a hard bargain, insisting on collecting a "tax" on the gas being pumped and demanding 15 percent of the transit gas at discounted prices. These requests have been rejected by the European Commission, the executive branch of the 27-nation bloc, delaying the 9 billion-euro project. More than half of the pipeline is to be located in Turkey.

The stalemate was broken at a summit in Prague last Friday between the EU and the countries involved. "The 15 percent demand has gone," Andris Piebalgs, the EU commissioner for energy, told the Guardian.

But European Commission President JosÃ© Manuel Barroso said Turkish President Abdullah GÃ¼l, who attended the Prague summit on energy, assured him the deal would be signed within weeks. The Guardian also reported that GÃ¼l indirectly linked any Nabucco deal with progress in Ankara’s negotiations with Brussels on joining the EU. But Barroso and others insisted that Ankara was not setting conditions for a Nabucco agreement.
Speaking on Friday, GÃ¼l said there had been progress in talks with the EU regarding the Nabucco pipeline project.