Bulgaria invites Nabucco shareholders to finance gas link with Turkey

If the Nabucco shareholders decide against financing the interconnector, it will be built by 2018 for emergency needs only with Bulgarian gas transmission system operator Bulgartransgaz investing some 100 million levs ($66.3 million/51.1 million euro) in it, a government statement quoted Boyko Borisov as telling a meeting of the ministers of the Nabucco transit countries in the Austrian capital Vienna.

Austria's OMV, the Bulgarian Energy Holding, Turkey's Botas, Romania's Transgaz, Hungary's MOL and Germany's RWE are partners in the Vienna-based Nabucco Gas Pipeline International, the project company of the 3,300-kilometre pipeline designed to connect the Caspian region and the Middle East with the Turkish and European gas markets that will ensure diversification of routes and sources and contribute to the security of gas supplies.

The first gas deliveries are expected by 2017.

(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)