11:00, 4 July 2009

Nabucco treaty to be signed on July 13 in Turkey

The official signing ceremony of the interstate treaty on construction of the Nabucco gas pipeline will take place on July 13 in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. This was announced by the European Commission on July 3.

The document will lay the legal foundation and define the terms for passage of the gas main across Turkey and EU member-states Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria.

The Nabucco Project, which is competing with the Russian South Stream, experiences difficulties for lack of suppliers. The Azerbaijani resources are insufficient to fill in the pipeline with gas, while Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan prefer to sell their gas to Russia, and Iran is under international sanctions, as reported by the Reuters.

The ITAR-TASS explains that one of the reasons of such long elaboration of the treaty was searching compromise with Ankara, which had moved a tough condition: 15% of all the gas delivered by Nabucco, should stay in Turkey for internal consumption or re-export. Today, it is not clear whether the EU has accepted this demand.