US champions EU's Nabucco gas pipeline project
BRUSSELS (AFP) — The EU's gas Nabucco pipeline project, to run from the Caspian Sea to Austria, is necessary to reduce European dependence on Russian giant Gazprom, a leading US official said on Friday.
"The Nabucco pipeline will be built, I am convinced because it makes commercial sense," said Matthew Bryza, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.
Nabucco is planned to be a 3,300-kilometre (2,050-mile) pipeline running from the Caspian Sea via Turkey and the Balkan states to Austria.
Construction is scheduled to begin in 2009, with the completion date set for 2013.
The pipeline will transport 31 billion cubic metres of gas to the energy-hungry EU from the Middle East and Asia so as to reduce the bloc's reliance on Russian supplies.
Gazprom is backing a rival pipeline project called South Stream.
Azerbaijan could possibly provide all the gas for the Nabucco pipeline, which would cut by a quarter the EU's reliance on the Russian gas monopoly Gazprom, he said.
Add into the mix gas from Norway, which could come on stream in seven years time, and the EU's dependence on Russian gas would fall further, Bryza told reporters in Brussels after talks with EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs.
The US official denounced Gazprom's methods, whereby the cost of gas bought in Central Asia undergoes a ""doubling of that price when it comes to Europe" to the benefit of "Shady middlemen".
He said the Russian gas giant was also acquiring infrastructure in Europe when "they should develop their own production more".
He said the US would like to push Gazprom towards "a more market-based behaviour"
Russia supplies about a quarter of the gas consumed in the 27 country EU and about 80 percent of that transits through Ukraine.
