Turkey will back all Caspian pipelines destined for Europe, Turkish energy minister, Taner Yıldız, told a high-profile forum discussing energy issues in the Black Sea region on Thursday, Today's Zaman reported.
"Turkey will always maintain its positive stance regarding the other pipelines destined for the West," he said.
According to him, efforts to bring the ambitious Nabucco project to life may face difficulties because of financial constraints, but the grand pipeline will eventually be completed.
In an address to the Black Sea Energy and Economic Forum, Yıldız said a number of other projects planned to ship Caspian natural gas to Europe would not be an alternative to the US and EU-backed Nabucco, which is expected to be operational by 2015.
"These projects are not competitors to Nabucco in the long run. The fact that energy supply security for Europe depends on more imports sheds light on the future process," he said.
A number of pipeline projects are under way to transport gas from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz fields to Europe. The Interconnection Turkey-Greece-Italy (ITGI) project is planned to pump 12 billion cubic meters of gas from Azerbaijan to Italy via Greece and Turkey, when it becomes operational in 2015. Another project, the newly announced Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) project, also aims to bring Shah Deniz gas via Turkey, Greece, Albania and across the bottom of the Adriatic Sea to Italy.