ANALYSIS-Russian gas pipeline more likely than EU's Nabucco

By Anna Mudeva and Thomas Grove

SOFIA/ISTANBUL, Oct 5 (Reuters) - A major Kremlin-backed gas pipeline may have a better chance of supplying Europe with new gas than the much-touted EU-backed Nabucco project, designed to ease the bloc's dependence on Russia, analysts say.

Although both projects are riddled with problems and may not move off the drawing board, the main question behind long-delayed Nabucco is whether it can secure enough Caspian and Middle East supplies to fill the pipe.

"Nabucco has fantastic political will behind it but so far no reality," said Jonathan Stern of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

"The crucial problem with Nabucco is that while it has political support it doesn't have the supplies to fill the 9 billion cubic metres for the first phase," said Derek Brower, an independent energy writer who specialises in the region.

The 31-billion-cubic-metre capacity pipeline is a key plank in EU plans to diversify gas supplies away from Russia after a political dispute between Moscow and Kiev last year cut off exports via Ukraine. Russia supplies a quarter of EU's gas.

Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Egypt and even Iraq have been mentioned as possible suppliers to the 3,300 km Nabucco which will pass via Turkey and the Balkans to Austria.

But so far the five signatory countries to the 4.6 billion euro pipeline -- Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria -- have not secured any gas and without supplies it would be difficult to raise funding, analysts said.

"The European Union has been putting strategy ahead of the market, but at the end of the day banks are banks and the gas has to be there (to be commercially viable)," said Brower.