EU energy chief lobbies for Nabucco

BRUSSELS, Sept. 4 (UPI) -- Europe needs to consolidate its political will to construct the Nabucco gas pipeline in order to move away from Russian energy, an EU official said Thursday.

Andris Piebalgs, the European commissioner for energy, said the European Union needs to use collective pressure to push the pipeline planned for European energy diversity, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported.

"We need more political engagement to remove all the obstacles to Nabucco," he said. "There are some obstacles that we should overcome."

The Nabucco pipeline will transport natural gas from Turkey to Europe. Several nations in Central Asia are expected to supply natural gas to Nabucco.

Several European nations are keen to explore alternative resources for energy imports following the conflict between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway republic of South Ossetia. Transportation through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which carries roughly 1 percent of the world's oil, was interrupted in part because of the conflict in Georgia.

"This does not change our minds … that this project should be supported," Piebalgs said.