Azerbaijan, Baku, 30 March / Trend corr A. Badalova/ Development of good relationships between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan is of great importance for the project on construction of the Nabucco gas pipeline, the Managing Director of Nabucco Gas Pipeline International Reinhard Mitschek said to BBC.
"Well as you know, Central Asia and the Middle East are the gas sources for Nabucco, and therefore for Central Asia, that are the countries Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, each country as such is important for Nabucco. And cooperation between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan is therefore also important to the project," Mitschek said.
According to Mitschek, the project has the USP (unique selling point) to have several possibilities for gas sources to be fed into the pipeline. "So therefore we have gas from Azerbaijan, from Kazakhstan, from Turkmenistan, from Iran, from Iraq, from Egypt. And therefore it is important to have a group of suppliers, it's not so important to have one single (supplier) but it is very important to have it as a group," he said.
Previously Mitschek said to Trend that Azerbaijan's participation in the project may become a valuable contribution.
"It will be helpful to have a Trans Caspian Pipeline from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan, there is no doubt, to bring Turkmen gas to Nabucco and further to transport it to European markets," he said. The project on construction of the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline envisages construction of a gas pipeline along the bed of the Caspian Sea with the carrying capacity of 30bln cu m per year.
Construction of Nabucco will begin in 2010. The first gas consignments will be pumped in 2013. The project is assessed at $7.4bln.
"I would say, South Stream or other projects will not make Nabucco obsolete at all. If we consider the huge demand in Europe and the declining European indigenous production then we have to count on additional gas imports to Europe. To bring further gas to the European market centres we need new infrastructure, we need capacity and therefore, one pipeline to be realised makes not obsolete another one," Mitschek said.
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