Turkey: Need More Effort From Nabucco Partners To Realize Project

Partners in the Nabucco pipeline need to show more effort to realize the project, Turkey's energy minister Taner Yildiz said Thursday, underlining the continued problems that have plagued the ambitious efforts to transport gas from the Caspian and Middle Eastern regions to central Europe through Turkey.

"Turkey has done as much as it can in this area...[partners] will have to show more efforts for this project," Yildiz said at an energy conference here.

The Nabucco pipeline is expected to deliver around 31 billion cubic meters of gas annually from the Caspian region and Iraq to central Europe through Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, bypassing Russia.

Nabucco has been backed by the European Union as it is considered crucial to diversify the bloc's heavy dependence on Russian gas. Russia accounts for around 25% of the EU's annual gas supplies.

Russia, the world's biggest energy supplier, wants to build its own routes to bypass transit country Ukraine after rows in recent years over prices. Its South Stream project is scheduled to start by the end of 2015.

-By Joe Parkinson, Dow Jones Newswires; [phone]; [e-mail]