Chief executive of Hungarian MOL oil and gas says the Nabucco gas pipeline will be realized only if Iran joins the project as a supplier.

“Nabucco becomes reality if we can get Iranian gas,” Zsolt Hernadi told journalists Monday in Vienna.
The Nabucco pipeline has the capacity of transferring 30 billion cubic meters of Caspian and Middle Eastern gas per year from Turkey to a gas hub in Austria.
The European Union supports the project as a vital part of its strategy to reduce its reliance on Russian gas.
Since the Russia-Georgia military confrontation in August during which a gas pipeline passing through Georgia was attacked, Europe has been considering the development of Nabucco as an alternative.
The Nabucco consortium has said it is necessary to add gas suppliers outside the Caucasus region, including Iraq and Iran, in order to fill the pipeline. “An empty pipeline is pretty expensive,” Hernadi said.
Austria’s OMV, Hungary’s MOL, Romania’s Transgaz, Bulgaria’s Bulgargaz, Turkey’s Botas and Germany’s RWE hold shares in the project, which is expected to cost around $12 billion.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in January that Tehran was prepared to supply gas to Nabucco. In addition, Iranian Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari added that he was optimistic a deal could be made.
“Everybody has recognized that the Nabucco project cannot work without Iran: a country with 16 percent of the world’s gas reserves cannot be ignored,” he said.
The US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs Matthew Bryza said earlier this year that Washington was strongly against the Nabucco pipeline being used to transfer Iranian gas to Europe.
The consortium plans to pump gas through the first section of the link beginning in 2013. (Source: Press T