The Budapest Nabucco summit has broken the "deadlock that (the gas pipeline project) has suffered over the past few years," Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany told the press on Tuesday afternoon after the conclusion of high-level meetings with stakeholder countries and potential gas suppliers, according to dpa. "We will do everything we can to make sure that stakeholder countries can come to an intergovernmental agreement by the middle of June," Gyurcsany said. "Following this we will endeavour to set up preliminary agreements with supply countries," he added. Gyurcsany added that he hopes the EU will eventually fund Nabucco to the tune of two billion euros (2.6 billion dollars), saying that an initial 200 to 300 million euros are needed to get the project off the ground. The European Union's Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for governments to officially commit to the project by the end of March, in time for an energy summit in Prague scheduled for May 7. However, Piebalgs did not go so far as to pledge any direct EU funding for the Nabucco project. The planned 8-billion-euro Nabucco pipeline would bring gas from the Caspian Sea region and possibly the Middle East across Turkey, into the EU and on to Austria. It is seen by the EU and the United States as an essential step towards reducing Europe's dependence on Russian gas. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, who currently holds the rotating EU presidency, restated his commitment to the Nabucco gas pipeline. "The Czech presidency has assumed energy security as one of its top priorities," Topolanek said. Reinhard Mitschek, head of the Nabucco consortium, said he expects engineering work and the marketing of Nabucco's gas transport capacity to begin this year. "On the basis of statements from political representatives and (banks), we believe an intergovernmental agreement will be reached very soon," Mitschek said. The Nabucco project manager said he believes that forging agreements with potential suppliers in gas-rich central Asia and the Middle East is of paramount importance. "Financing will not be an issue. We need to concentrate on the supply," Mitschek said.
