BUDAPEST, Hungary, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- The Hungarian Parliament approved an intergovernmental agreement for the construction of the Nabucco gas pipeline for Europe.
Hungary, Austria, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey signed a milestone intergovernmental agreement on the construction of the 2,050-mile pipeline in July.
Nabucco is designed to have the capacity to move 1.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas each year to European customers from Caspian and Middle Eastern suppliers. The pipeline would run from the Caspian region through Turkey to Austria along a route through Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary.
Parliament ratified the agreement by a vote of 334 ayes with one abstention, the Hungarian news agency MTI reports.
The 50-year intergovernmental agreement merges Turkish and European regulations for the pipeline.
Europe aims to ease its dependency on Russian natural gas with Nabucco. A January row between Kiev and Moscow exposed vulnerabilities in the European energy sector as roughly 80 percent of Russian natural gas exports to the region travel through Ukraine.
The European Parliament in May voted to provide nearly $300 million for Nabucco. Despite political backing for the project, it still lacks firm commitments from potential gas suppliers.
