Turkmenistan: Lavrov Visits Ashgabat Seeking to Scuttle Nabucco Possibilities - Newspaper

Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, is in Ashgabat in an attempt to steer the Turkmen government away from participating in the European Union-backed Nabucco natural gas pipeline, a Russian newspaper report suggests.

"There is the tug of war. We can assume that one purpose of [Lavrov's] visit is that Moscow is trying to present a more compelling offer than the European Union's," Ajdar Kurtov, an analyst at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, told Nezavisimaya Gazeta on March 16.

In early March, German energy giant RWE, which holds explorations rights to two hydrocarbon blocks in the Turkmen portion of the Caspian Sea, said negotiations to secure Turkmen gas for Nabucco were ongoing.

"RWE is conducting intensive discussions with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan over gas-supply contracts, with concrete progress on these negotiations anticipated in the first half of this year," the company said in a press release issued March 5.

RWE is also a partner in the Nabucco project. Turkmen participation in Nabucco is considered essential to the projected pipeline's economic viability.