MOL ready to sell its stake in Nabucco

Hungarian MOL has serious concerns over the Nabucco gas pipeline project and is ready to sell its stake in it, Reuters reported with the reference to the company's CEO Zsolt Hernadi.

"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," Hernadi said at a news conference on Thursday.

Nabucco is one of the Southern Gas Corridor projects, designed to transport gas from the Caspian region and Middle East to the European countries. Gas produced within the second phase of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas condensate field development is considered to be the main source for the Nabucco project.

MOL is a 100-percent owner of FGSZ Natural Gas Transmission Company, which is one of the six shareholders in Nabucco gas pipeline project. The project's other partners include Bulgarian Energy Holding, Romanian Transgaz, Turkish Botas, Austrian OMV and German RWE.

This week Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that MOL is leaving the project. Later the company said in its statement that it would not finance the 2012 budget of Nabucco Gas Pipeline International (NIC).

According to Hernadi, financing Nabucco had cost about 20 million euros for the MOL group and NIC was not appropriately managed.

He also said that so far a lot of questions about Nabucco project remain unanswered, including the issues on gas sources, costs, shipping costs, and this is the reason why the company could no longer finance NIC.

"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," Hernadi said.


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