DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Two European energy companies helping build a pipeline to reduce the continent’s dependence on Russian gas said Sunday they will team with Mideast producers to feed the route with Iraqi fuel.

In a consortium announced in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, Austria’s OMV AG and Hungary’s MOL said they will each take a 10 percent stake in an Iraqi gas production site operated by the sheikdom’s Dana Gas and Crescent Petroleum.

The deal gives the European companies a share of an $8 billion project to extract natural gas from the Khor Mor and Chemchemal fields in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region.

Having a guaranteed supply source should jump-start efforts to build the 2,000-mile (3,300-kilometer) Nabucco pipeline linking Turkey to central Europe. Moscow opposes the project, as it would bypass Russian export routes.