Nabucco Committee reaffirms commitment to building pipeline

Permanent members of the Nabucco Committee reaffirmed their commitment to bringing gas from the Caspian Sea region to Europe through the planned Nabucco pipeline in a political declaration signed at a meeting in Budapest on Friday, the National Development Ministry said. Representatives of the signers of the inter-government contract on the Nabucco pipeline – Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Austria – participated at the meeting.
    Representatives of the United States, the European Commission and the Nabucco International Consortium, which includes Hungarian oil and gas company MOL, were present as observers.
    The Shah Deniz II consortium will select the winning bid at a tender for the delivery of the initially available 10 billion cubic meters of Azeri gas in June, Pal Kovacs, development ministry state secretary in charge of energy affairs said.
    Nabucco submitted its bid to Shah Deniz at the end of March, and will make a binding bid by the end of April, Reinhard Mitschek, managing director of the Nabucco Gas Pipeline International GmbH (NIC)told journalists after Friday's meeting.
    TAP (Trans-Adriatic) gas pipeline is also competing for the project, Kovacs said. The Nabucco West pipeline project is to bring gas from Central Asia to Europe, reducing the region's energy dependence on Russia.