MUNICH, July 15 (RIA Novosti) -Nabucco is...

An intergovernmental agreement on the transit of Caspian gas to Europe as part of the Western-backed Nabucco gas pipeline project was signed on Monday in Turkey at a ceremony attended by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and officials from about 20 countries.

The project, estimated at $7.9 billion, is designed to pump Central Asian gas via Turkey to Austria and Germany through Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. The pipeline, intended to bypass Russia, is planned to go on stream in 2014.

"We don"t believe that Nabucco is a serious rival to our projects, which you know well - the Nord Stream and South Stream," Zubkov said, adding that experts did not believe there was sufficient gas to fill the Nabucco pipe.

Among the potential gas suppliers for the pipeline are Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Iraq.

The South Stream project is designed to annually pump 31 billion cubic meters of Central Asian and Russian gas to the Balkans and

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