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Monday, 08 September, 2008, 17:50 GMT | more prices >>

RWE on Nabucco starting block



By Upstream staff 

Germany's RWE will sign up as the sixth partner in the Nabucco gas pipeline project on 5 February in Vienna, Turkey's Energy Minister Hilmi Guler said today.

Turkey is determined to see the Nabucco project through to completion, and RWE's participation will accelerate the project, he told Reuters in an interview.

The approval of RWE as the sixth partner in the pipeline consortium had been delayed by an administrative detail at state-owned Botas pipeline company, Turkey's representative in the Nabucco consortium.

"(Botas) has approved the selection of RWE as the sixth partner in the consortium, and the partnership will be made official at a ceremony in Vienna on 5 february," Guler told Reuters.

The €4.6 billion ($6.63 billion) pipeline is designed to pass via Turkey and the Balkans to Austria and is a key plank of the European Union's plans to reduce its dependence on Russian gas imports.

Delays have hampered work on the project, but Guler said the selection of RWE as the sixth member will help speed up operations.

"RWE is an extermely strong company and a leader in the sector. The selection of RWE as the sixth partner will help speed up the project," he said.

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 had indicated previously that it backed RWE as the sixth partner over Gaz de France , which had also been vying for the position, after Paris 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.


Wednesday, 30 January, 2008, 08:50 GMT  | last updated: Wednesday, 30 January, 2008, 09:24 GMT

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