Region: Visegrad Four meet on energy

By Robert Hodgson

For the Budapest Times

Hungarian Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai proposed a "gas supply triangle" Feb. 24 to increase the region's energy security during a summit in Budapest between the leaders of the Visegrad Four (V4) countries: Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

"The countries of Eastern and Central Europe must reduce their one-sided energy dependence in order to strengthen their energy security," Bajnai said.

The draft strategy to reduce dependence on Russian gas supplies piped through the transit country Ukraine involve a liquefied natural gas terminal on Poland's Baltic Sea coast, a similar terminal on the Croatian island of Krk in the Adriatic, and the much talked about Nabucco gas pipeline, which would transport Central Asian petroleum products through Turkey to Austria. The V4 leaders all endorsed Bajnaj's proposal.

Both the European Union and the United States favor the Nabucco pipeline as a means of diversifying Europe's gas supplies. It is hoped that, if the proposed project becomes a reality, plentiful gas reserves in Central Asia and the Middle East could be transported to Central Europe while bypassing Russia in the supply chain.

Moving toward Nabucco

Russia - which has blamed Ukraine for disruptions to the Central European gas supplies in recent years - is also pushing forward with a project of its own. The South Stream Pipeline would deliver Russian gas to Western Europe via the Balkans and Hungary.

At the meeting last week, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) said the Russian project would be useful, but Nabucco was a better solution. Nobuo Tanaka told the Hungarian state news agency MTI that Nabucco would diversify not only the delivery channels for natural gas, but also the sources of the gas. He also praised moves toward a greater cooperation among regional gas consumers.

"A partnership based on mutual interests could be established from Poland to Croatia, which could be very useful in times of crises, for example," Tanaka said.

The prime ministers of Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Serbia, and representatives of Austria, Germany, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Spain, the United States and the European Commission were also in Budapest for the meeting Feb. 24. Azerbaijan's Deputy Energy Minister Gulmammad Javadov met the head of the Hungarian Parliament's Nabucco committee, János Kóka, while in Budapest. Kóka subsequently said Azeri gas reserves were potentially sufficient to fill the Nabucco pipeline's planned capacity of 31 billion cubic meters per year.

Besides still needing to secure more than 8 billion euros ($10.8 billion/207 billion Kč) to build Nabucco, the six-company pipeline consortium's chief concern has been establishing reliable sources of gas, without which the pipe would be a monstrously expensive white elephant. Bajnai discussed potential gas supplies during a recent official visit to Egypt. Another potential supplier could be Iran, although any deals could be controversial and likely to meet with stiff opposition, particularly from the United States. Turkmenistan, which has the world's fourth-largest natural gas reserves, has been considered another possible source, but the country's leaders have so far been reluctant to cooperate with the project.

Robert Hodgson can be reached at news@praguepost.com