EU hosts Prague energy summit on alternatives to Russian gas

The European Union targeted an energy treaty with states such as Egypt, Turkey and Azerbaijan on Friday as it held a summit with Middle Eastern and Central Asian powers in Prague. The EU's «Southern Corridor» summit brings together officials from the EU, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to discuss ways to improve transport and energy- transit links between Europe and the East, Earth Times says.

The EU is keen to reduce its dependency on Russia, which currently accounts for a quarter of all the gas burned in the bloc.

According to a draft summit declaration seen by the German Press Agency dpa, the 27-member bloc will ask participants to work towards an energy transit treaty - a «corridor agreement» - setting out the rules on how energy supplies should be transported, how much transit countries should charge and how the fees should be shared.

The EU will also ask energy producers to set aside specific volumes of oil and gas for its use, as the bloc bids to guarantee energy supplies in an increasingly competitive world.

And it will press Turkey to agree within weeks the rules covering the «Nabucco» gas pipeline, the highest-profile energy project in the region so far, in a bid to kick-start construction of the project.

In return, the EU should give «reliable commitments» on the amount of fuel it will buy, to ensure «transparency, competitiveness, long- term predictability and stable regulatory conditions.»

And it should offer its partners the technology and investment they need to upgrade their own energy systems and use their resources more efficiently, the draft says.

In order to reduce reliance on gas supplies from Russia, the bloc is pushing for the construction of three new pipelines in the region which would ultimately bring natural gas from the Caspian basin, Iran and Iraq to Europe.