Addressing a two-day summit dedicated to the Nabucco project in Budapest, Topolánek today (27 January) said that Russia's plans to build its North Stream and South Stream pipelines are aimed at keeping Europe dependent on Russian gas and threaten the Nabucco pipeline project, Reuters reported.
"These routes bypass Ukraine as well as Central Europe, while maintaining the EU's high dependency on Russia. This is a direct threat to the Nabucco project," stated Topolánek.
Up to know, Commission representatives at all levels have always played down the rival nature of the South Stream and Nabucco projects (EurActiv 04/07/08). A high-level representative of the EU executive recently said South Stream was not an alternative to supplies from Russia, but a necessary additional channel of supply.
In response, a top Russian representative expressed doubts as to the feasibility of the EU-favoured pipeline. "Nabucco could be a monument to great ambitions and actions not thought through properly," Viktor Zubkov, Russia's first deputy prime minister, said in Budapest. Zubkov is also chairman of Gazprom's board of directors.
Speaking at a public event in Brussels yesterday, Vladimir Chizhov, Russia's ambassador to the EU, said his country was not against Nabucco. He said the only difference between Nabucco and South Stream is that in the case of the former, "there is no gas to fill the pipe".
The two-day summit in Budapest gathered presidents, prime ministers and energy ministers from twelve countries, along with representatives of the European Commission and financial institutions. In the aftermath of the recent gas crisis, the Nabucco and South Stream pipelines, both of which will bypass Ukraine, are expected to benefit from a major political boost, analysts say.
(With agencies.)
