The Turkish parliament on Friday ratified an agreement to construct the Nabucco gas pipeline to deliver Caspian gas to Europe, the country's Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The 3,300-kilometer Nabucco pipeline construction project is estimated at $7.9 billion, and will transfer natural gas through Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Austria, bypassing Russia. The pipeline is to pump 20-30 billion cubic meters of gas annually. "After publishing on June 4 in the official newspaper of the corresponding order by the Cabinet of Ministers, the process of ratifying the agreement in our country has been completed," the statement read.
The EU-backed Nabucco pipeline is widely considered a rival to the South Stream project, which will pump 63 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas annually to Bulgaria, Italy and Austria and is part of Russia's efforts to cut dependence on transit nations, particularly Ukraine and Turkey. The statement said the intergovernmental agreement would come into force beginning August 1, 2010. Each participant in the consortium for building the pipeline has a 16.67% share in the project. The participants are Turkey's Botas, Bulgarian Energy Holding, Hungary's MOL Plc, Austria's OMV Gas&Power Gmbh, Germany's RWE, and Romania's Transgaz.
