EU confident about gas deliveries even without Nabucco

European Commission has announced that it is unworried about the Nabucco pipeline project not being chosen to deliver gas to the bloc. Brussels argued the rival TAP consortium would serve the purpose just as well.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said that he was not worried about future natural gas supplies to the EU.

His comment came two days after a consortium of developers of a huge gas field in Azerbaijan chose the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) for deliveries to Europe instead of the Nabucco project long supported politically by the EU executive.

TAP comprises Norway's Statoil, Axpo of Switzerland and the German utility company E.ON. The pipeline will run 800 kilometers (500 miles) across northern Greece and into southern Albania before traveling under sea to Italy.

Barroso said the TAP project also served the EU's primary objective of becoming less dependent on Russian supplies.