 |
| |
WEEKLY
SECTIONS |
 |
|
 |
| Key Nabucco gas pipeline deal to be signed on July 13 |
|
|
|
Saturday, July 04, 2009
BRUSSELS: EU nations and Turkey will sign a key intergovernmental agreement in Ankara on July 13 on the European Union’s Nabucco flagship gas pipeline project, EU participants said on Friday.
“The intergovernmental agreement on Nabucco pipeline project will be signed in Turkey on July 13,” Bulgaria’s Economy and Energy Minister Petar Dimitrov told journalists, according to his spokesman. The European Commission also confimed that it had been invited.
“The commission has received an invitation to the signing ceremony of the intergovernmental agreement on the Nabucco pipeline on July 13 in Ankara,” a spokesman on energy issues told reporters.
The 3,300-kilometre Nabucco pipeline is due to bring gas from the Caspian Sea to Austria via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, while bypassing Russia, in a bid to reduce Europe’s energy dependence on Moscow.
The commission spokesman declined to provide details about the agreement, saying only that they would be made public once the agreement between the EU nations involved and Turkey is signed.
The commission, the EU’s executive arm, is not a signatory to the agreement but once legal details are ironed out it might sign up as an observer, the spokesman explained.
Nabucco is in direct competition with Russia’s rival South Stream project, developed by Russia’s gas giant Gazprom and Italy’s Eni, and which will channel Russian gas through Bulgaria to Western Europe under the Black Sea.
|
|
|
| Back
| Send
this story to Friend | Print
Version |
|
|
|
ISSN 1563-9479 
