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Nabucco intergovernmental agreement may be postponed

11 June 2009 10:39 (UTC +04:00)

The planned 3,300-kilometre (2,051-mile) pipeline needs an agreement between the governments whose countries the pipeline will cross.

Besides, there is a need to secure commitment from potential gas supplies who expressed tentative consent to fill the pipeline.

Turkish Minister Taner Yildiz attributed the possibility of postponement until July to the fact that some problems still remain unsettled

He didnâ€™t elaborate on the problems which he said could delay the agreement signing.

Earlier, the pipeline partners had agreed to sign an intergovernmental agreement in Istanbul on June 26.

Reinhard Mitschek, Managing Director of the Nabucco gas pipeline consortium, said in Baku last week that final documents would be sealed in weeks, and issues related to funding would be addressed in early 2010.

The project case has been strengthened by the gas price row between Russia and transit country Ukraine in January, which left over a dozen European countries without gas for two weeks.

The project is competing with the rival Russian-backed South Stream project to feed growing European gas consumption.

Nabuccoâ€™s shareholders are Austriaâ€™s OMV, Hungaryâ€™s MOL, Romaniaâ€™s Transgaz , Bulgariaâ€™s Bulgargaz, Turkeyâ€™s Botas and Germanyâ€™s RWE
Named after the Babylonian king in the eponymous opera by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi, the pipeline will take 31 billion cubic meters of gas each year from the Middle East to Europe from 2013-2014 at the earliest.