Hungary’s MOL Ready to Sell Stake in Nabucco Project

Hungarian energy company MOL is ready to sell its stake in the Nabucco natural gas pipeline project, it was made clear on Thursday.

"We have signalled that we are ready to sell our shares if necessary...we merely had to send a very very strong signal now that we are not willing to finance this any longer," MOL CEO Zsolt Hernadi told reporters on Thursday.

Hernadi pointed out that financing Nabucco had cost about 20 million euros for the MOL group and Nabucco Pipeline International was not appropriately managed.

"There is no answer to questions like who will provide gas for the pipeline, under what conditions it will be shipped, what will be the transit conditions .... There has not been an answer for over 10 years," the CEO commented, as cited by international media.

The Nabucco Consortium said in an official statement on Tuesday's that it has no indication to believe that Hungary and its energy company MOL will quit the Nabucco gas transit pipeline project. The statement followed Hungarian PM Viktor Orban's announcement on Monday that MOL may quit the project.

Nabucco, a joint venture of Mol, Germany's RWE AG (RWE), Vienna- based OMV AG (OMV), Bulgaria's Bulgargaz EAD, Romania's Transgaz SA and Ankara- based Boru Hatlari ile Petrol Tasima AS, or Botas, may be scaled down and linked up with the Trans-Anatolia Pipeline, known as Tanap, at the EU's southern border, Nabucco Managing Director Reinhard Mitschek said last month.

Nabucco was initially set to carry up to 31 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year from the Caspian region to Europe. It was expected to relieve Europe's dependence on Russian gas supplies.

The construction of the 4000-kilometer pipeline was set to start in 2013 and the first gas was expected to flow in 2017.

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