Bulgarian, Turkmen Leaders to Discuss Nabucco Gas Project

Bulgarian president Georgi Parvanov is to visit Ashgabat in the second half of December for talk with his Turkmen counterpart Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov.



Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov told a December 5 2008 cabinet meeting that preparations for the trip were in hand.



No details of the agenda for Parvanov’s visit have been made public, but NBCentralAsia observers believe his talks will centre on the role Turkmenistan might play in the Nabucco pipeline, which would take gas from Azerbaijan via Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to Austria – bypassing Russia altogether.



For Turkmen gas to be exported by this route, a separate Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline would need to be built under the sea to Azerbaijan.



“This is the main reason behind President Parvanov’s visit,” said Annadurdy Hadjiyev, a Turkmen economist based abroad. “The two countries aren’t involved in any other kind of cooperation.”



Governments involved in the Nabucco project have been showing a lot of interest in Turkmenistan recently. In early December, the presidents of Turkey and Azerbaijan visited the country.



However, analysts note that the pipeline plans are still a long way from reaching fruition.