Azernews.Az

ASTANA – Kazakhstan is ready to be a part of the Nabucco gas pipeline, but the European Union must do more to make its participation in the project possible, President Nursultan Nazarbayev was quoted by Russian RIA Novosti as saying on Sunday.
"Kazakhstan has never been against Nabucco, the issue is that in Europe there is a lot of talk about Nabucco...but in practice little is being done," Nazarbayev said at a news conference in Astana after the talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Nazarbayev pointed out that either a sub-sea Caspian pipeline, connecting Kazakhstan to Nabucco or, at least, a gas liquefaction plant on its Caspian coast is needed for the country to join the EU-backed pipeline project, seen as a rival to Russia's South Stream.
"Nothing has been done on either issue except only talks," Nazarbayev added.
The Kazakh president said that neighboring Turkmenistan, which has abundant gas reserves, has also said it could contribute to Nabucco, but it also needs to have these issues resolved.
"The European Union could work more actively on this," Nazarbayev said.
The Nabucco project is intended to transport natural gas from the Caspian region to Europe bypassing Russia, to run through Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Austria. It is designed to transport 31bn cubic meters of gas annually, which would meet as much as 5 percent of EU demand in 2020.
Russian Gazprom's South Stream project bypasses Ukraine, running through Turkish waters, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia to reach Austria.
Both Russia and the EU rule out that the planned pipelines could be rivals, despite the fact that the bulk of the gas for each project would come from the same Caspian region countries.
Kazakhstan's Caspian shelf has an estimated 3.3 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves, and the country's gas production is expected to reach approximately 45bn cubic meters in 2010.