ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE IRAN JOINS NABUCCO PROJECT – HUNGARY’S MOL

http://world.brunei.fm/2009/12/17/only-a-matter-of-time-before-iran-joins-nabucco-project-hungarys-mol/

BERLIN, Dec 17 (NNN-IRNA) — It is only a matter of time before Iran becomes a gas supplier for the Nabucco pipeline project, the chief executive of the Hungarian oil and gas group MOL, Zsolt Hernadi said.

“Regarding the (Nabucco) supplier countries, sooner or later, we will also

get our gas from Iran,” he told the German business daily Handelsblatt Wednesday.

“Iran has huge energy reserves but has so far no market for them. The country has to invest on a massive scale to be able to exploit its reserves at all,” he added.

Hernadi stressed his company was already having “contacts with Iran on a technical level.”

Expected to cost around Euro 7.9 billion, the Nabucco pipeline is scheduled to bring 31 billion cubic metres of Caspian and Middle Eastern gas a year from Turkey to an Austrian gas hub via Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary by 2014. The project is backed by the European Union as a way of lowering its dependence on Russian gas.

A major sticking point remains securing guaranteed supplies.

The consortium has said it could fill Nabucco using suppliers outside the Caucasus region, among them Egypt, Iraq and Iran.

Nabucco’s shareholders include Austria’s OMV, MOL, Romania’s Transgaz, Bulgaria’s Bulgargaz, Turkey’s Botas and Germany’s RWE.

– NNN-IRNA