Azerbaijan, Baku, June 3 / Trend , A. Badalova/
Nabucco gas pipeline project remains undone, Azerbaijani Industry and Energy Minister Natiq Aliyev said. "No significant steps have been taken yet to realize the Nabucco project," the minister said.
He said issues regarding the project are only raised at conferences and summits. Countries and companies only "express their support for the project."
Aliyev said gas sources of the project remains unknown yet. No single agreement has been signed with a supplier yet.
Nabucco is not an easy project. Technical, political and judicial issues must be solved to pave a way for its realization, he said.
Originally Azerbaijani gas and gas from the Caspian Sea as a whole was not expected to fill the pipeline. It was targeted at Iranian and Iraqi gas. However, it so happened that these sources can not justify themselves at the moment.
"There are still problems," Aliyev said. "It is not so easy to deliver Caspian gas to European markets."
"Azerbaijan can be responsible only for itself and make decisions based on its natural gas resources. But we can not speak, for example, on behalf of Turkmenistan," Aliyev said. "It was expected that the countries of the Caspian region will produce 300 billion cubic meters gas by 2020. However, no one can predict which volume of this gas will be delivered to Europe."
Construction of the Nabucco gas pipeline project is expected to begin in 2011. The first deliveries will take place in 2014. It will have capacity of 31 billion cubic meters per year. Nabucco shareholders are the Austrian OMV, Hungarian MOL, Bulgarian Bulgargaz, Romanian Transgaz, Turkish Botas and German RWE with 16.7 percent each. About 30 percent of the project will be invested by Nabucco Gas Pipeline International on basis of its share. The remaining 70 percent will be provided by international institutions. The rest will be invested by export-credit agencies and commercial banks.