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RWE takes place at Nabucco table



By Upstream staff 

The Nabucco consortium confirmed today that German utility company RWE will join the €5 billion ($7.4 billion) project aimed at piping gas from the Caspian to Europe.

"RWE is a strategically compatible partner," the Nabucco consortium said in a statement.

The project, designed to pump gas via Turkey and the Balkans to Austria through a 3300 kilometre pipeline, is a key plank in European Union plans to ease dependence on Russian gas.

The consortium is now equally owned by RWE as well as oil and gas companies in the transit countries - Austria's OMV, Hungary's MOL, Turkey's Botas, Bulgaria's Bulgargaz and Romania's Transgaz.

Meanwhile, earlier today MOL said it supported a proposal to include France's Gaz de France along with RWE in the Nabucco natural gas pipeline project.

"MOL, as one of the owners of Nabucco Gas Pipeline International, is welcoming the new concept that would involve Gaz de France as the 7th member of the Nabucco project," MOL said in a written comment.

"We believe that both RWE and Gaz de France represent a high additional value to the Nabucco project that proved its need for very strong economic and political support from the European companies and governments," Benjamin Lakatos, director of MOL Gas Midstream said in a statement.

Yesterday Romanian President Traian Basescu said he supports the idea of taking on Gaz de France as an associate member in the project.

Gaz de France had also been considered as a sixth partner but Turkish officials objected to the French company 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.


Tuesday, 05 February, 2008, 16:37 GMT  | last updated: Tuesday, 05 February, 2008, 16:42 GMT

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