Green light: from Tayyip Erdogan
RWE 'to join Nabucco fold'
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has given the nod to Germany's RWE becoming the sixth partner in the European Union-backed Nabucco pipeline project, an official at the prime minister's office said today.
The official was speaking to Reuters news agency.
A decision on RWE's partnership was also due this week from Turkish state pipeline company Botas, a stakeholder in the Nabucco project, a Reuters report said.
The €5 billion ($7.4 billion) Nabucco project - designed to pass via Turkey and the Balkans to Austria - is a key plank of the EU's plans to reduce its dependence on Russian gas imports.
But several delays have hampered the pipeline, including the selection of a sixth partner.
Turkey had indicated previously that it backed RWE over Gaz de France as the sixth partner after France passed a bill making it a crime to deny that Armenians suffered a genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks in 1915-16.
Ankara denies that the killings were a systematic genocide.
On Friday Russian President Vladimir Putin signed with Bulgaria an agreement securing the new EU member's participation in the rival €10 billion South Stream pipeline project, highlighting delays on the Nabucco project.
The Nabucco consortium is equally owned by oil and gas companies in the transit countries - Austria's OMV, Hungary's MOL, Romania's Transgaz, Bulgaria's Bulgargaz and Turkey's Botas.
Turkey has delayed its selection of a sixth partner in the consortium while settling administrative issues at Botas.