Nabucco, the venture constructing a natural-gas pipeline from the Caspian to western Europe, may add Azerbaijan's state oil company Socar as a sixth partner to secure gas supplies from Central Asia, Austrian Economy Minister Martin Bartenstein said.

``Azerbaijan will be a very important gas supplier in one, two or three years,'' Bartenstein said in a television interview in Vienna to be broadcast today. Nabucco's current five partners may add one or two more companies to the project and source gas from Turkmenistan or Kazakhstan in the future, he said.

Bringing more partners into the project may help Nabucco to secure financing, customers and gas for the pipeline, scheduled to start operations in 2012. Germany's RWE AG and Gaz de France SA are vying to join the venture to ship gas over 3,300 kilometers (2,070 miles) between Turkey and Austria, helping the European Union reduce its energy dependence on Russia.

The companies already participating in Nabucco are Turkish state pipeline company Botas, Bulgaria's Bulgargaz AD, Romania's Transgas, and Austrian and Hungarian oil companies OMV AG and Mol Nyrt. The project, led by OMV, is named after the opera by Giuseppe Verdi that was performed in Vienna the day it started.

OMV had said it plans to announce at least one other partner from western Europe by the end of the year to help finance the 5 billion-euro ($7.33 billion) project.

Turkish Opposition

Gaz de France is facing opposition in Turkey because of a bill passed by the French lower house last year making it a crime to deny that genocide was carried out against Armenians in 1915 in what's now Turkey. Turkey denies claims of genocide, saying Armenians were killed as part of a wider civil conflict during World War I.

The Nabucco pipeline would rival a gas link planned by Russia's OAO Gazprom, which wants to ship more of the fuel to western Europe. The company seeks to build routes under the Black Sea and Baltic Sea to reach its customers in Europe, where gas demand is expected to double through 2030.

``Gazprom officials don't necessarily have a positive stance on the project,'' Bartenstein said in the interview. ``Russian government officials have a different view'' and support it, he said. The two planned pipelines aren't competing with each other and European energy demand growth is big enough to make both commercially successful, according to Bartenstein.