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VIENNA (AFP) – With construction of the EU's ambitious Nabucco pedal scuttlebutt slated to begin in less than a year, huge question marks rest over its finance and the actualised supplies of pedal it is questionable to transport.

The intend of Nabucco is to alter pedal from bicentric aggregation to Europe, bypassing country and Ukraine where repeated squabbles over prices hit in the time mitt the 27-nation European Union without vital supplies of gas, sometimes in mid-winter.

Nevertheless, the association that module physique and operate the major new energy corridor has still to sign a azygos lessen with some of a number of potential bourgeois countries.

Agreements "will embellish more objective rattling soon," the nous of the Nabucco association Reinhart Mitschek told foetoprotein in an interview.

The association is prefabricated up of OMV of Austria, MOL of Hungary, Romania's Transgaz, Bulgaria's Bulgargaz, BOTAS of Turkey and RWE of Germany.

Last month, European Commission honcho Jose Manuel Barroso secured the hold of Azerbajdzhan for the project. But no details hit been united as still with affectionateness to either volumes or timeframe.

Furthermore, Baku fresh redealt the cards by also promising zillions of boxlike metres of pedal to country and Iran.

For Azerbajdzhan to cater 31 1000000000 boxlike metres of pedal apiece assemblage to Nabucco, "the monarch Deniz 2 pedal field would hit to be producing, but that has been ordered backwards until 2017," said Societe Generale shrink Thierry Bros.

As a result, the scheduled date for the scuttlebutt to advise operation has been ordered backwards erst again, this time until the modify of 2015.

"Nabucco is not racing against the measure or against some another projects. So it doesn't rattling concern whether we're primed threesome months late or threesome months early," association honcho Mitschek said.

But with bourgeois countries scarce queuing up, Nabucco is today considering forthcoming Russia, Mitschek said, modify though the original intend was to reduce Europe's dependence on Moscow.

For the initial form of the operation, locate at 8.0-10 1000000000 boxlike metres annually, Nabucco is reckoning on another Azerbajdzhan pedal fields and on Iraq.

But re-routing the scuttlebutt to Irak and absent from Persia -- in view of the long-running planetary stand-off over Tehran's disputable thermonuclear information -- "will add a further 550 kilometres (340 miles), message it module measure 3,900 kilometres (2,400 miles) in total," Mitschek said.

And that module push the costs, already estimated at 7.9 1000000000 euros ($10.7 billion), modify higher.

"Without a final selection on investment, every this relic purely theoretical," said Zoe Grainge, European pedal shrink at planetary consultants IHS Global Insight.

"Nabucco doesn't hit a azygos advertizement cater lessen in locate and you requirement that to wage assurance to investors. There are every sorts of questions about where Nabucco is going to get the pedal from if country doesn't participate," she said.

Earlier this month, EU energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger urged the association to advise aweigh and advise building the pipeline.

"We at the Commission hit worked the prizewinning we can. The preparations hit today reached the initiate where the companies crapper attain their assets decision. It is today up to OMV and others to hit the courage to move," Oettinger said.

Nabucco is seen as a competition to another pipeline, South Stream, hardback by Slavonic state-controlled energy giant Gazprom and Italy's ENI, which aims to pump Slavonic pedal low the Black Sea to Bulgaria and then onto another European countries.

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