Romania has started talks to join the Russian-sponsored South Stream gas transit pipeline, Romanian Economy Minister Adrian Videanu has announced.

“South Stream is going to pass through Romania. We have managed to start a dialogue for the participation of our country in the gas pipeline,” Videanu has stated during an online conversation with Romanian media without providing any further details, Russian media reported Friday.

The Russian papers point out, however, that on April 9, the head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, said Romania could be included in South Stream as a consumer but not as a transit country – i.e. it can only receive gas through additional land or underwater pipes connecting it with the main pipeline.

The South Stream gas transit pipeline is a project of Russia's Gazprom, Italy's Eni, and France's EDF. It will start at the Beregovaya station on the Russian Black Sea coast, and from there will go to the Bulgarian Black Sea coast; from Bulgaria, the pipe is to split in two in order to reach Southern and Northern Italy. The Black Sea section of the pipe is 900 km long, and will run at a depth of 2 km.

So far Russia has signed agreements for joining the South Stream project with Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Greece, Slovenia, and Croatia. On Wednesday, Austria also announced it would join the project.

Russian media remind that Romania has tried to replace Bulgaria as the major transit hub of the South Stream pipeline in the Balkans, and that it has even submitted to Gazprom data for the preparation of a pipeline route through Romanian territory. Gazprom, however, has remained on its initial positions to use Bulgaria's territory for its project which is seen as a major competitor of the EU-sponsored pipe Nabucco.

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