Bulgaria Reaffirms Support for Nabucco
A meeting in Vienna today between Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolai Mladenov and Nabucco managing director Reinhard Mitschek, saw the Bulgarian Minister reaffirmed his country’s support for the gas pipeline project, saying that it would help achieve diversification of gas supplies to Bulgaria and reduce the country’s energy dependence.
Nabucco was an essential element of the Southern Corridor and had been approved by the European Commission as a priority European project, key to the security of gas supplies for the entire continent, Mladenov said, quoted in a Foreign Ministry media statement.
Mitschek said that Nabucco would make a very large contribution to the energy security of Bulgaria. He thanked Mladenov for Bulgaria’s support and "very good co-operation" which would ensure that the project is carried out in good time.
An intergovernmental agreement between the countries participating in the gas pipeline project was signed in July 2009 and was ratified by Bulgaria’s Parliament in February 2010.
A statement by the Nabucco company on November 23 said that the Nabucco project had reached some significant milestones in 2010 with the start of the environmental impact assessment and social impact assessment procedures; with the mandate letter of EBRD, EIB and IIF, the start of the technical project for two feed-in lines in Turkey as well as the first qualification process for long-term supplies.
On November 22, Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger as identifying Nabucco and Russia's South Stream gas pipeline as potential competitors.
"South Stream is likely to compete with Nabucco in the long term," Oettinger told journalists in Brussels, during a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the EU-Russia Energy Dialogue, the news agency said.
On November 20, Bulgarian news agency Focus quoted Bulgaria’s Economy and Energy Minister Traicho Traikov as having told Austrian daily Der Standard that the EU should take advantage of its diplomatic authority in order to urge Turkmenistan to provide gas for the Nabucco gas pipeline,
Traikov, according to the report, said that Nabucco would fail if the European Commission did not vow its strong support to the project.
"From an economic point of view Nabucco is a perfect project, but regretfully, not enough is being done on it," Traikov was reported to have said. "Most of all, the EC must take an active stand. The EC’s engagement consists of mere words so far."
In an encourage step for Nabucco, representatives of Turkmenistan promised last week to provide billions of cubic metres of natural gas to Europe.
Turkmenistan says it will have up to 40bn cubic metres of spare gas annually, "so European countries need not worry".
Source: Sofia Echo