Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed into law the country's gas pipeline agreement with Russia and Turkmenistan on Wednesday, according to a presidential website.
The agreement, signed by Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkey in Dec. 2007, plans to carry more of the Central Asian gas to Russia by constructing new Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline and by increasing the capacity of the Central Asia-Center pipeline system.
Kazakhstan's approval of the agreement could divert potential supplies away from Europe's Nabucco project, analysts said. During a summit in Prague last week, officials from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan refused to sign a final declaration to accelerate work on the European Union-backed Nabucco project to bring Caspian gas to Europe.
The Russian pipeline plan is expected to transport up to an extra 10 billion cubic meters of Turkmen gas a year and the same volume of additional Kazakh supplies.
Russia's natural gas company Gazprom said in April that it may double the capacity of the pipeline to 40 billion cubic meters a year.
Source:Xinhua
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