Gyurcsány
discusses gas supply options with Turkmen president

Prime
Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány met his Turkmen counterpart Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow
in Turkmenistan last week to discuss issues surrounding the proposed Nabucco
gas pipeline.

Gyurcsány
told Berdimuhamedow that the viability of the Nabucco project is highly
dependent on receiving assurances from Turkmenistan that it would supply
the gas needed to pump into the pipeline.

Following
six hours of talks, Gyurcsány said the Turkmen president “indicated that he
might be willing to make the commitment,” and was amenable to the Hungarian
PM’s planned Nabucco Summit in Budapest.
Russian president Dmitri Medvedev had paid an official visit the previous week.

Nabucco Summit

Before
travelling on to Turkmenistan,
Gyurcsány met with Azeri president Ilham Aliyev last Monday evening. Aliyev
said his country would be prepared to pump a few million cubic metres of gas
into Nabucco, but did not intend to invest in the project.

The prime
minister’s plan for a summit in Budapest
for all potential participants in the Nabucco project was reported the
following day.

The government’s
official announcement was made last Thursday when Gyurcsány was back on home
turf. “The Prime Minister initiated a summit meeting with the participation of
all the players in the Nabucco project: its shareholders, the transit countries
and the supply countries,” said the government spokesman David Daroczi.

Gyurcsány
angered the EU last year by calling the Nabucco project a “dream” and showing
apparent preference for Russia’s
rival South Stream pipeline project. In February, he signed a deal with the
President Vladimir Putin, confirming that the EUR 10 billion Russian pipeline
will run through Hungary
after passing through Bulgaria
and Serbia.

“We have
never heard the word ‘Nabucco’ from our Turkmen colleagues. Nabucco is a
virtual reality of European bureaucrats,” the Russian presidential aide Sergei
Prikhodko said last week while asserting that Turkmenistan will not be
participating in the Nabucco project,

All this
comes as a blow to the EU and the US,
both of which are looking to Nabucco as a way of reducing Europe’s
dependence on Russian gas supplies. Gyurcsány has said that he believes there
is room for both projects.

Nabucco
would connect the EU to gas reserves in Central Asia and the Middle
East, but there are growing doubts over whether it will be
possible to fill it. Besides Turkmenistan,
Russia has recently struck a
deal with Kazakhstan,
whereby it will import 10 billion cubic metres per year from each of the two
countries though a proposed Pre-Caspian Pipeline.

The US objected in June to the idea of importing
Iranian gas to Europe through Nabucco,
although, logistically this would make sense.

The Budapest summit is needed
to settle many questions and uncertainties surrounding the plan, said
Gyurcsány. “Now is the time…to look each other in the eye and take a stand on
problems that come up,” he added, before cautioning that people must be
prepared for the possible conclusion that there is no point in building the
Nabucco pipeline.

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