MOSCOW, May 18 (RIA Novosti) - Europe will need not just one but several new gas pipelines, Russia's EU envoy Vladimir Chizhov said on Monday ahead of a Russia-EU summit, but questioned the objectivity of the EU's Eastern Partnership project.
He said at the current rate of demand, Europe will need "North Stream, South Stream, Nabucco and perhaps half a dozen others," adding that Nabucco was originally conceived as a political project and so he had "serious doubts that its construction will be cheaper than South Stream."
Russian gas monopoly Gazprom signed agreements on Friday with transit states Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Italy to push forward South Stream, to pump natural gas to Europe.
The pipeline is a rival project to the Western-backed Nabucco pipeline, designed to bring gas from Central Asia and the Caspian to Europe bypassing Russia. The EU, nervous about growing energy dependence on Russia, is backing the project despite the current economic crisis.
Europe has expressed concerns about being dependent on Russia, which supplies a quarter of its natural gas needs. Calls for diversified supplies intensified following bitter price disputes between Russia and Ukraine in recent years, when Moscow cut off gas to Ukraine, affecting consumers across Europe.
Moscow has argued, however, that South Stream and another gas link to Europe via the Baltic Sea, Nord Stream, would cut EU dependence on transit states like Ukraine and improve European energy security.
Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said on Friday South Stream would cost an estimated 8.6 billion euros ($11.6 billion), and the pipeline launch date had been set for December 31, 2015, although the partners would try to complete the project earlier if possible.
On the issue of the EU Eastern Partnership, Chizhov said its members were being forced to choose between Russia and the EU.
The Eastern Partnership program, adopted by 27 EU countries in 2008, includes Azerbaijan, Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, Moldova and Georgia and aims to bring these countries in line with EU standards without formal admission to the EU.
"It is important for Russia that the implementation of this initiative does not lead to the establishment of new dividing lines in Europe," Chizhov said.
He added that signs to that effect had emerged insofar as "for example, Belarus was given a kind of an ultimatum - unacceptable either in form or in content - that if Minsk recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, it would be shut out of the European partnership."
The Russian delegation at the meeting in the Russian Far East city of Khabarovsk, scheduled for May 21-22, will be led by President Dmitry Medvedev and include several cabinet ministers.
The EU will be represented by Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, which holds the EU rotating presidency, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
