Gaz de France is still keen to acquire a stake in the prospective Nabucco pipeline to deliver gas from Central Asia to Europe, the company’s chairman said Tuesday.

"We’re still very open to participating in Nabucco," Jean-Francois Cirelli said at a hearing at the French Senate on the natural gas company’s pending merger with electric utility Suez.

"A new route for gas is in the interest of Europe," Cirelli said. "But if GDF Suez is not in the pipeline, we’re still a candidate to buy some of the capacity that will pass through it," Cirelli said.

GDF’s Cirelli said the Nabucco project faces two difficulties - the size of the investment needed, which he estimated at between ?5 billion to ?6 billion ($7.8 billion-$9.4 billion), and finding gas to fill the pipeline.

Turkey blocked Gaz de France’s way to the Nabucco natural gas pipeline project in reaction to a France’s stance the 1915 events.
All Central Asian natural gas exports to the EU currently flow through Russia, which has sought to cement its grip on energy supplies to Europe.
he West hopes to use gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz fields to feed the Nabucco pipeline, but Russia has also been courting Azerbaijan, hoping to buy all of the estimated annual output of 12-13 billion cubic meters of gas at Shah Deniz’s second stage where production is expected to start in 2012.
Moscow dealt a heavy blow to Nabucco last fall after reaching a deal with Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan for those countries’ Caspian Sea gas supplies to flow through Russia. It is also backing a rival pipeline route from the Caspian via Russia.
Inter-governmental and transit country accords for the Nabucco pipeline project will be signed within a few months.

Against the backdrop of negotiations with potential suppliers, Azerbaijan still remains the real source to fill the pipeline and deliver Turkmen and Kazakh gas via its territory to the Nabucco pipeline.

The pipeline, which will be one-third financed by the owners, and two-thirds by banks, is meant to diversify and lessen Europe’s dependence on Russian gas from 2013.

The project requires two million tonnes of steel, 200,000 pipes and more than 30 compressor units.
The pipeline consortium - Nabucco Gas Pipeline International Ltd. is equally owned (16.67% each) by Austria’s OMV, Hungary’s MOL, Turkey’s Botas, Bulgaria’s Bulgargaz and Romania’s Transgaz and Germany’s RWE.