Sixth client on an empty pipe

Gaz de France joins the Nabucco project

State-owned Gaz de France announced at the end of the week that it was joining the Nabucco gas pipeline project , which would bring Caspian gas to Central Europe, bypassing Russia. She announced this in Budapest after a conference dedicated to the project, where the emergence of the sixth member of the consortium was officially and unanimously supported by its existing participants: the Austrian OMV, the Hungarian MOL, the Romanian Transgaz, the Bulgarian Bulgargaz and the Turkish Botas. GdF was unable to agree with Gazprom on participation in another large-scale infrastructure project - Nord Stream along the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The Russian concern is completing negotiations on a deal with the Dutch Gasunie, which should receive up to 9% of the shares of Nord Stream, the company operator of this project (Gazprom owns a controlling stake), in exchange for its participation in the BBL gas pipeline project from the Netherlands to Great Britain.

The event in Budapest was accompanied by a number of political statements on the topic of European energy security. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who arrived in Budapest on a working visit, called on the EU to develop energy based on peaceful nuclear power (nuclear power plants occupy a significant share in the French energy balance), and Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, who received him, advocated an active search for an alternative to Russian gas, as well as a consolidated position EU in negotiations with suppliers. “Given the existence of monopolistic sellers, gas recipients must coordinate their actions,” said Mr. Gyurcsany. Until recently, Budapest expressed great doubts about the prospects of Nabucco and a year ago they even agreed with Gazprom to develop a gas pipeline project through Turkey and the Balkans based on the expansion of the Russian Blue Stream export pipeline.

Everything changed a few months ago, when Gazprom began actively discussing with the Italian Eni a new route for transporting gas to the south of Europe. Negotiations on cooperation with MOL died down, and at the beginning of the summer a memorandum was signed in Rome on the implementation of the South Stream project, according to which gas from Russia along the bottom of the Black Sea should be delivered to Bulgaria and Greece, and then to Italy. The possibility of supplies from Bulgaria to the north (to Serbia and Hungary) has not yet been officially rejected, but initially it looks more unfavorable.

“We have no complaints (to Russia. - Ed. ),” said Mr. Gyurcsany. -- Our task is to find new sources and ways of transporting energy resources. It would be foolish for a country or region to be happy with just one supplier.” And he called for speeding up the construction of Nabucco. Currently, Russian supplies provide 80% of Hungary's gas needs, and this dependence will grow in the future.

However, the main problem of Nabucco - the lack of long-term guarantees of filling the pipeline with gas - remains. There is currently no supplier ready to transport 30 billion cubic meters per year via Nabucco over the next 25-30 years. The Minister of Energy of Azerbaijan (the country is considered as the most important supplier of its own gas and a transit country for Central Asian gas for Nabucco) Natik Aliyev did not say anything reassuring in Budapest. “We can join South Stream, we can join Nabucco. For Azerbaijan, the main goal is to produce more gas and oil and supply them to Europe,” Reuters quotes him as saying. At the same time, it is well known that Azerbaijan has almost distributed a significant part of its own gas between Turkey, Greece and promised to Italy (the construction of these gas pipelines is already underway). But it has not yet been possible to agree on the implementation of a project to create a trans-Caspian pipeline through which Turkmen and Kazakh gas could flow through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Nabucco. Mr. Aliyev said Azerbaijan would try to improve relations with Turkmenistan, but did not promise anything specific and did not give a time frame. “We have improved our relations with Turkmenistan, in one or two months Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan will hold meetings,” the minister promised. So, despite the mighty lobbying efforts of the United States, there is still a long way to go to resolve the problems between Baku and Ashgabat.

Alexey GRIVACHS