WASHINGTON, June 3 (UPI) -- Washington views transit options that create more natural gas diversity to Europe, including the Nabucco pipeline, very favorably, a U.S. energy envoy said.
Europe is pressing for its Southern Corridor of gas transit networks that include three pipeline networks, notably Nabucco, to break the Russian grip on the energy sector.
The Nabucco project consortium in Vienna aims to get some of the gas to fill the pipeline with non-Russian natural gas suppliers like Azerbaijan.
Richard Morningstar, the U.S. special envoy for Eurasian energy, told the U.S. House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia that the Southern Corridor made sense for Europe.
Washington, he said, "strongly supports the establishment of a new pathway, the so-called Southern Corridor, to bring natural gas to Europe, via Turkey, from the Caspian and potentially other sources beyond Europe's southeastern frontiers."
The Nabucco consortium announced in May that construction was delayed by one year to 2013 and gas deliveries weren't expected until 2017 because of supplier timelines.
Alexei Miller, chief executive at Russian gas company Gazprom, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying that even the delayed Nabucco pipeline is "very, very optimistic."
Gazprom is nearly finished with its Nord Stream gas pipeline through the Baltic Sea and is lobbying European allies for its South Stream pipeline, viewed as a Nabucco rival.
