Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Nabucco Natural Gas Pipeline Project, Reinhard Mitschek, said Thursday "the Nabucco project is a crucial one as a backbone of the market".
Speaking at the 8th Turkey International Oil and Gas Conference in Ankara, Mitschek stressed that the Nabucco project implies an investment worth eight billion euros which will contribute to the growth of the Turkish economy, reported Worldbulletin.
Europe and Turkey are getting more dependent on foreign sources of energy as energy consumption increases, Mitschek said.
We expect the first gas flow under the Nabucco project to take place in 2014, Mitschek said.
Stressing that Turkey has an "excellent" strategic position, Mitschek said that Turkey must increase the number of her gas tanks within the framework of the Nabucco project.
The Nabucco pipeline length is approximately 3,300 km, starting at the Georgian/Turkish and/or Iranian/Turkish border respectively, leading to Baumgarten in Austria. 1,998 km of the pipeline goes through Turkey.
A reasonable amount of the gas volumes, reaching Baumgarten, have to be further transported through Austria to the Central and Western European countries.
According to market studies, the pipeline has been designed to transport a maximum amount of 31 bcm/y.
Estimated investment costs including financing costs for a complete new pipeline system amount to approximately 8 billion euros.
As an outcome of the feasibility study, it was decided to construct the pipeline in two major stages - first to construct the complete new route from Turkish borders to Baumgarten, and second to construct further compressor stations to increase capacity. At the same time, it was decided that construction step I would be technically split into two separate back-to-back construction phases:
The first construction phase, starting in 2011, will cover the planned route between Ankara and Baumgarten, corresponding to the construction of approximately 2,000 km of pipeline. After this phase, the existing pipeline facilities between the
Turkish/Georgian and Iranian borders could be used for an interim period of 2 years, in order to link the new pipeline to the Turkish borders. This will enable the project to start operation and marketing of the pipeline to start in 2014 with an initial pipeline capacity up to 8 bcm, while the construction of the rest of the pipeline will be finished in parallel.
The second construction phase will run from 2014 until end 2015 and will consist of the construction of the remaining section between the Turkish border to Georgia resp. Iran and Ankara.
A following construction step II will consist of installation of further compression stations at key points of the pipeline in order to continuously increase the pipeline capacity up to 31 bcm/y.
A Legal Working Group is preparing partnership agreements, inter-governmental agreements, operation agreements and other relevant agreements in regard to the Nabucco Project.
Aside from BOTAS, Germany's RWE, Austria's OMV, Hungary's MOL, Bulgaria's Bulgargaz, and Romanian Transgaz have shares in the Nabucco Project.