Czechs push for southern pipeline

Europe is making progress on the long-proposed Nabucco pipeline, but obstacles to the gas project remain at its source, Central Asia.    

Experts say there have been significant moves forward on the pipeline project under the Czech EU presidency, triggered as much by circumstances as action. Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek's visit to Central Asia last week is the latest in a series of events initiated by the Ukraine-Russia gas dispute earlier this year.

"Nabucco all of a sudden became more important," said Lucia van Geuns, deputy director of the Clingendael International Energy Programme in The Hague. "A sense of urgency is now clear. That is different."

A late-January meeting in Budapest saw the European Commission pledge 250 million euros in financing. While a consortium to build the pipe and transport the gas is increasingly solid, signing on gas suppliers remains a major stumbling block. Another meeting on the issue is slated for Prague in May.      

"I am not convinced that, once the pipeline is laid, it will be filled," said van Geuns. "You can lay a pipe. The whole supply issue is unresolved."  

During Topolánek's three-day trip to Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan last week, Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Masimov reiterated his country's commitment to partnering with Russia on gas transport.

"It is primarily a political decision," said CEO of state energy company ČEZ Martin Roman, who accompanied Topolánek, of Kazakhstan's participation.

Russia is working with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan on its own pipeline project. China is also increasingly a Central Asian player.

Nabucco would begin at Erzurum in eastern Turkey and end in Austria, traversing Southeast Europe. It could connect with two other Central Asian pipelines and be capable of drawing supplies from the Caspian Sea Region including Iran. The most optimistic forecasts put the pipeline operational by 2013.

With the Czech Republic - a country that directly experienced the Ukrainian supply cut this year - at the head of the EU, the project is gaining momentum, but other member states have their own plans. Italy is the proposed terminus for Russia's South Stream pipeline while Germany is pushing the Russian North Stream project to pipe gas under the Baltic Sea.

"The diversification of pipelines is an absolute necessity," van Geuns said.

Benjamin Cunningham can be reached at
bcunningham@praguepost.com