MOSCOW, May 5: The European Union’s Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs has offered to finance plans to build a natural gas export pipeline from Kazakhstan that would avoid transit through Russia during a visit to the Central Asian state, a spokesman said on Friday.

“Certainly, the European Commission is supportive and we are ready to provide initial financial support for feasibility studies,” said Ferran Tarradellas, a spokesman for Piebalgs, contacted by telephone in Brussels.

“We acknowledge that Kazakhstan may be an important supplier in Central Asia. It’s a starting relationship,” he added.

Europe and Russia have been engaged in a bitter war of words for weeks, with Moscow threatening to move gas exports away from the European Union if expansion plans by the state-controlled gas giant Gazprom are blocked.

“It’s important to develop alternative sources of energy,” said Tarradellas in reference to widespread concern over the European Union’s dependence on Russia for some 26 per cent of its gas imports.

But the planned new pipeline from Kazakhstan would not serve to undermine routes from Russia, the spokesman stressed: “We see the need to develop alternative routes not in opposition, but as a complement to existing routes.”

Russian media reported the pipeline would travel from Kazakhstan under the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan, then to Turkey and on to European markets.—AFP