Romanian President: There are some problems related to the Nabucco agreement. The consortium denies the information

Romanian incumbent president Traian Basescu announced on Friday that „there are some problems with the inter-governmental Nabucco agreement”. This is the reason why Romanian chief of state postponed his visits to two Bucharest-Brasov motorway sites.

UPDATE: Friday’s negotiations between Turkey and Azerbaijan regarding a price for the Azerbaijani gas did not reach to any conclusion. Azerbaijan is one of the main Nabucco gas suppliers and Turkey is trying to stop the price increase requested by Azerbaijan.

The Nabucco agreement is meat to be signed on Monday, July 13, by Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria.

Official denials

„The Nabucco consortium sees no problem. We know only that the agreement will be signed on Monday in Ankara”, consortium spokesperson Christian Dolezal declared for HotNews.ro. According to the consortium information, either President Basescu or PM Boc will be Monday in Ankara and Romania did not communicate there was any problem with its delegation. „Maybe the Romanian president will explain exactly what he means during the weekend”, Dolezal concluded.

Nabucco is going to transport gas from Central Asia, through Turkey, towards Central Europe. The gas pipe is important for Romania because it is an alternative to the gas imported from Russia. Nabucco is backed by the EU and is competing with the Russian gas pipe project, South Stream.

Transgaz general manager Ioan Rusu told HotNews.ro that he wasn’t aware of any recent problem. „According to my knowledge, I will be in Turkey on Monday to see the signing of the agreement,” he said. State secretary for Economy Ministry doesn’t seem to know either what President Basescu is talking about.

UPDATE Problems in Bulgaria?

The Bulgarian PM requested the blocking of the energy projects the ex-socialist Bulgarian government was involved, Reuters informs. It is not yet clear if the projects initiated by Russia, like South Stream, and/or Nabucco, supported, theoretically, by Borisov.

Borisov said the new government needs to evaluate the impact of certain projects, like South Stream and Balene Nuclear Centre (both involving Russia) without explicitly mentioning Nabucco, Reuters informs.

Boiko Borisov said in the beginning of this week that he supported Nabucco. Bulgaria is one of the countries to sign the inter-governmental agreement on Monday in Ankara.

Gazprom, Nabucco’s competition

Gazprom signed up, at the end of June, for a significant Adzerbaidjan gas import. In this respect, Gazporm will buy an annual 500 million cube meters of gas from the Sakh Deniz ore, Nabucco’s supplier. Azer company SOCAR president Rovnag Abdullayev tried to eliminate any suspicion that the company will favour Gazprom. He said on Friday that no country had priority and that Baku authorities support Nabucco, Forbes informs.

UPDATE Nabucco was long time frozen because the disagreements between the participants and lack of finance. It is now backed by the ex-Foreign Affairs German minister, Joschka Fischer. He was appointed political consultant of Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk, a German electric power and natural gas public utility.