Azernews.Az

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said construction of a trans-Caspian pipeline that would carry natural gas to the West requires agreement among all littoral states of the Caspian Sea, Russian media reported.

The 300-kilometer pipeline is to link Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan in order to export gas via Azerbaijan to European markets.

The pipeline is part of Nabucco, the main competing project to the Russian-backed South Stream in Europe seeking to deliver Caspian and Central Asian gas to European markets bypassing Russia. The Nabucco pipeline is part of planned links known as the Southern Corridor, intended to reduce EU dependence on Russian gas.

Addressing a meeting of Russia’s Security Council, Medvedev termed building a pipeline under the Caspian Sea as "a quite complicated issue".

"This issue, undoubtedly, directly depends on the status of the Caspian... and requires coordinating the positions of all countries included in the Caspian Summit," Medvedev said.

The European Commission has been authorized by the European Union to negotiate with energy-rich Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan on legal aspects of the implementation of the Trans-Caspian pipeline project. Negotiations are expected to begin in the near future.

Talks between Turkmenistan and the EU on the construction of the trans-Caspian pipeline have been underway since the late 1990s. Its construction has been hampered by the unresolved status of the resource-rich Caspian Sea.