Azerbaijan, Baku, June 8 /Trend, A.Badalova/
A minister from the semi-autonomous region of Northern Iraq said the area could provide natural gas to make the Nabucco pipeline feasible, EurActiv reported with reference to Northern Iraqi Energy Minister Ashti Hawrami.
"We can provide 14 or 15 billion cubic metres to make the project work," said Hawrami.
According to him, Northern Iraq is estimated to possess 6-8 trillion cubic metres of natural gas reserves, Hawrami said. Despite tensions between Northern Iraq and the country's central government over who should shoulder the cost of extracting the gas, the minister said he was optimistic that the issue would be resolved quickly.
Today Iraq is regarded as one of the main suppliers of gas for the Nabucco project, designed to carry gas from the Caspian region and the Middle East to the EU.
An official representative of the Nabucco project, Christian Dolezal, told Trend earlier that given the fact that the implementation of Shah Deniz-2 project is scheduled for 2016, the first gas deliveries through Nabucco, which is scheduled for the end of 2014, will be realized at the expense of the Iraqi gas. In the first stage of realization, the Nabucco project expects Iraqi gas in volume of 8 billion cubic meters, and Azerbaijani - 10.8 billion cubic meters
The cost of the Nabucco project is 7.9 billion euros. Construction of the pipeline is scheduled for 2011 and first deliveries are expected to be realized in 2014. The project participants are the Austrian OMV, Hungarian MOL, Bulgarian Bulgargaz, Romanian Transgaz, Turkish Botas and German RWE.