Pipeliners

3/19/09 - Eurasianet.org - It would seem the European Union is losing faith in the long-sought Nabucco pipeline project. The pipeline has disappeared from an EU list of projects designated to receive development assistance of up to 5-billion euros. Perhaps not coincidentally, Nabucco fell off the EU list at the same time the Russian energy conglomerate Gazprom announced that it had turned down an offer to participate in the Nabucco project. A top company official, Alexander Medvedev, said during a March 16 interview broadcast by the Vesti television channel that Gazprom would devote its resources to developing the rival South Stream pipeline. EU foreign ministers, meeting on March 16, apparently made the decision to downgrade the Nabucco project. In January, the EU set aside $250 million euros to help with pipeline construction. Around the same time, however, a summit meeting in Budapest, convened in order to jump start Nabucco, ended in disappointment. The pipeline project remains bogged down by questions about natural gas supplies. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. The inability to bring clarity to this issue apparently played a major role in the EU funding decision.