Azerbaijan, Baku, March 16 /Trend, V.Zhavoronkova/
Political instability in the Arab world, as well as an accident at a nuclear power plant in Japan will increase Europe's interest in importing energy resources from the Caspian region, said a European energy expert Neil John Melvin.
The political situation has destabilized in the Arab world, rich with energy resources, which reduced the trust of the world's buyers of oil and gas in it.
As a result of the devastating earthquake on March 11 and the tsunami in Japan, an accident occurred at a nuclear power plant, which led to a significant increase in radiation levels.
"Global energy market is going to be in a turmoil following the events in Japan and the Middle East, which I think would make a push now from European side to bring these hydrocarbon resources to the European market even more strong, European Energy Agency member and expert of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Neil Melvin told Trend in a telephone conversation from Sweden.
He said after events in Japan, there will be a major review of nuclear power around the world, and many of European countries, which are using nuclear power, may have to reduce that.
So in the mediate period, before they bring other kind of resources, oil and gas would probably be the first choice, the analyst said.
"Those point to a further rise in the importance of hydrocarbon resources in the Caspian region," he said.
The energy resources, exactly natural gas, is scheduled to be delivered from the Caspian region to Europe, through the Southern Corridor projects, which includes such routes as Nabucco, Trans-Adriatic pipeline (TAP), White Stream, ITGI (Turkey-Greece-Italy) .
Southern Corridor is a priority for the EU, and aims to diversify routes and sources of supply, thereby increasing the energy security of the EU.
Melvin said when to see how much electricity is generated in Europe from nuclear power (in countries like Germany, Bulgaria, France, UK etc.), the whole European market now faces possibly a reduction in the amount of power generated by nuclear.
"And Europe has to bridge that gap somehow," the expert said.
However, despite the increase in EU's interest in the energy resources of the Caspian, the time-table for Nabucco is probably going to be pushed back further, he said, adding that we might see the consolidation of different European projects now.
The revision of gas pipeline projects can be caused also by extremely high prices for materials and services. In particular, the increase in steel prices has raised the question to revaluate the budgets of these projects, including Nabucco.
"I think the prospects may be combining parts of Nabucco with parts of some other projects like ITGI," he said.
The expert said publicity at a degree of consolidation is going around all these pipelines in the next few months.
E.Ostapenko contributed to the article.