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Nabucco intergovernmental agreement to be signed in July at latest

17 June 2009 08:33 (UTC +04:00)

BakÄ±. APA-Economics. The signing of an intergovernmental agreement on the Nabucco gas pipeline project will be signed in July at the latest, said Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources.

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 told local media that Turkey wants 15 percent of the gas pumped through the planned pipeline for its domestic use.

European Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs told Britain’s Guardian newspaper last month that Turkey had already dropped its demand for the 15 percent.

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

Reinhard Mitschek, Managing Director of the Nabucco gas pipeline consortium, said in Baku three weeks ago 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.