An intergovernment agreement on the Nabucco gas pipeline as well as an agreement on support for the project by companies in the consortium that want to build it must be made in the coming months if funding available right now is to be used for preparations for the project, Hungary Nabucco envoy Mihály Bayer said.

The intergovernment agreement is expected to be signed by the end of May, allowing Parliament to ratify it before the end of the spring session, Bayer said.

Oil and gas company MOL representative Benjámin Lakatos said the board of the project company for the pipeline, Nabucco Gas Pipeline International (NIC), had accepted the company's €50 million budget plan for 2009. MOL has committed €8.8 million to the amount, he added.

MOL is participating in the project company with Austria's OMV, Romania's Transgaz, Bulgaria's Bulgargaz, Turkey's Botas and RWE of Germany.

Benjámin said he was sorry the EU had decided to provide just €200 million in support for the first steps of the Nabucco project, rather than the earlier announced €250 million. He said he was happy that the Commission now proposed €20 million in EU support to finance an interconnector between gas lines in Hungary and Croatia.

An examination of the costs of the 3,300-kilometer Nabucco pipeline will be completed in three or four months, Lakatos said.

The €7.9 billion price tag is likely to be lower because of the falling cost of base materials, Bayer said.

Bayer termed a Nabucco summit held in Budapest in January a success, especially the Budapest Declaration it produced. The document, signed by some of the participants at the summit, laid down a cost-based delivery method for the entire length of the pipeline, which even Turkey approved. The declaration says the EU must make the project a priority and that an intergovernment agreement on the project should be signed in the first half of the year. (MTI – Econews)