Azernews.Az

BAKU – Iraq can enter the international gas consortium Nabucco sooner than Turkmenistan, U.S. Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy Richard Morningstar was quoted by Russian ITAR-TASS as saying.

The U.S. diplomat called Nabucco, aimed at providing European market with gas bypassing Russia, "an important strategic project", assuring that the U.S. "unconditionally support it."

Morningstar added that though U.S. companies are not included in the project, but they might be involved in equipment supply. However, he said "the main issue is who, besides Azerbaijan, will supply gas via the pipeline."

The U.S. envoy called the Turkmenistan and Iraq as the "possible options". But he added that "Turkmenistan is unlikely to enter the project in the near future, primarily for political reasons."

Concerning Iraq, Morningstar said "Baghdad has expressed interest in the pipeline" and he expects that they will enter the project in the "foreseeable future".

The Nabucco pipeline is scheduled to commission in 2015. Its annual capacity will top 31 billion cubic meters of gas. Azerbaijan is expected to supply eight billion cubic meters of gas. According to experts, the same amount of gas supply will fall on Iraq. However, the pipeline’s security issues are still on agenda.

It is important that the project member-companies would show the commercial initiative in the near future, according to Morningstar.