MOL Confirms It May Sell Nabucco Stakes

One of the six shareholders in the Nabucco pipeline, Hungary's MOL, has confirmed that is not willing to continue financing the Nabucco pipeline and may sell its stake if necessary.

Speaking at its annual shareholder meeting today, Chairman of MOL Zsolt Hernadi backed up an assertion made by Hungarian President Viktor Orben that the project was in trouble, particularly in relation to financing of the project.

"We have signalled that we are ready to sell our shares if necessary...," Reuters news agency reports Mr. Hernadi as saying today. "We merely had to send a very very strong signal now that we are not willing to finance this any longer."

He told the shareholders of MOL that a number of uncertainties still remained for the project which so far remained unanswered from the Nabucco consortium.

"Today nobody talks about that old big Nabucco dream that for God knows how much, we don't even know this number, we bring gas from the Caspian region to ... neighbouring Austria," he said.  "Who will provide gas into the pipeline, under what conditions it will be shipped, what will be the transit conditions ... there is no answer. There has not been an answer for over 10 years."

He said that in order for the company to leave the project, they would likely need to find a buyer to take over the shares, but would not finance the pipeline over a €20 million investment so far made into the pipeline.

"This is not a club where you can enter or which you can leave, but a company where we have a capital stake," Reuters reports him as saying.

Spiralling costs have weakened the position of the Nabucco pipeline in recent years, with estimates on the final cost of the project reaching up to €15 billion, as estimated by Guenther Oettinger, the EU's Energy Commissioner. This far exceeds the consortium's projected costs of €7.9 billion.

A revised route earlier this year was also implemented to make the project more attractive to the consortium leading the Shah Deniz project, from which the Nabucco consortium was vying to bring gas.