Nikolae Ureke: "Events in Georgia accelerated the Europe's search of new energy sources"

- Is Romanian President expected to attend the energy summit to be held in Baku in mid November?

- Yes, the president voiced intention to take part in the meeting. Everything will depend on his work schedule, in November we will have parliamentary elections. But as the head of the state is not actively involved in the election campaign, we do hope that the Romanian president will attend the Baku summit, as he promised to President Aliyev. The issues on the agenda of the summit are important for Romania, therefore, I think that the Romanian President will come to Baku.

- Is Romania greatly interested in the Caspian energy sources?

- Like others, we also need energy sources. We try to maximally diversify sources of their supply, today they are supplied to Europe by the only route and we want to diversify the supply sources to ensure competition, best prices, large volumes of energy sources. In this connection, we consider the Caspian region to be the most perspective hydrocarbon sources. We are interested in it, like any other EU member-state.

- Which project takes more of your interest?

- This is Nabucco. We consider it to be the most important project. We do hope that during the talks about its implementation progress will be attained by the end of this year. In February the Hungarian Prime Minister will arrange a conference on Nabucco with participation of the countries, involved in the project directly.

In other words, Nabucco is our priority among the regional energy projects.

- But Russians consider it to lack prospects...

- It is their opinion. We think that Nabucco has all chances. There are sufficient funds for it, we have created a consortium, there is a wide list of the countries, which are looking forward the launching of gas supplies by this pipeline. It is cheap and easily implemented, therefore, we consider that it is much easier to implement the Nabucco pipeline than any other project. Today, most speak of the North flows, South flows and other flows, but it is Nabucco which has all chances for implementation, it is strongly supported by the European Union. I am confident that Nabucco pipeline will be implemented.

- Don't you think that the attempts of some circles to politicize this project hamper its implementation?

- Yes, there are definite interests here and some countries have their ambitions in the region, but I hope that all these issues will be settled by way of talks. The political problems can always be settled only by way of a dialogue, talks, provision of mutual interests. It is very important to ensure maximally possible cheapness of this project.

- After the recent events in the South Caucasus Moscow tries to present Georgia to the world as an extremely unreliable participant of regional energy projects. Isn't it a problem?

- On the contrary, the events in Georgia stressed the need for new energy sources. These events accelerated the search of the new routes by EU states.

/Day.Az/