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RWE says smaller Nabucco pipeline is against gas suppliers' interests

Oil&Gas Materials 14 April 2011 15:56 (UTC +04:00)

Azerbaijan, Baku, April 14 / Trend A.Badalova /

The consortium of Nabucco gas pipeline project doesn't consider a downsizing of the pipeline's planned maximum capacity of 31 billion cubic meters a year, the materials of German RWE, which were sent by the company to Trend via e-mail, said.

In March BP's chief executive for refining and marketing Iain Conn said that the pipeline that will be built to transport natural gas from the Caspian basin to Europe will have a capacity of 10 billion cubic meters a year and be expandable. This statement has raised some questions as to whether Nabucco will be downsized to a smaller pipeline.

A smaller Nabucco pipeline would work against the interest of suppliers for the project (Azerbaijan, Iraq, Turkmenistan, Egypt) as well as all involved parties, RWE's report said. Gas supply negotiations are on going in Azerbaijan, Iraq and Turkmenistan.

"Such a small sized pipeline would be for the interests of one upstream field only (namely the Shah Deniz gas field in Azerbaijan) and hence work directly against the stated interests and strategic objectives of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey and Europe, the report said. o The transportation tariffs would be excessively higher under a smaller scheme given the lack of economies of scale - this would considerably impact the value of the gas sold by gas suppliers and begs the question of economic viability".

Jeremy Ellis, Head of Business Development at RWE Supply & Trading GmbH said that there's more than enough natural gas to fill the Nabucco pipeline.
Nabucco project is designed to transport gas from the Caspian region and the Middle East to the EU countries. The project's participants include the Austrian OMV, Hungarian MOL, Bulgarian Bulgargaz, Romanian Transgaz, Turkish Botas and German RWE.

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