Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb. 13 / Trend A. Badalova /
Nabucco gas pipeline project will not be able to compete with the proposed Azerbaijan-Turkish Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP), Julian Lee, an energy analyst at the Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES) said.
"If Azerbaijan and Turkey to carry gas across Turkish territory, I do not see Nabucco being able to compete," Lee told Trend via e-mail.
TANAP is Azerbaijani-Turkish project, which envisages construction of the pipeline from the eastern border of Turkey to the country's western border. Azerbaijan and Turkey signed a memorandum of understanding to establish the consortium that will build a gas pipeline with the initial capacity at 16 billion cubic metres. The cost of TANAP will be set by SOCAR and may be close to the figure of $5 billion. The parties involved in the project intend to resolve issues on this gas pipeline this year and plans to commence construction immediately will see completion by late 2017.
Lee believes that TANAP has decreased the attractiveness of Nabucco project, at least in the form it was originally proposed.
Nabucco gas pipeline is one of the Southern Gas Corridor projects, which is designed to transport gas from the Caspian region and Middle East to the European countries. Gas, which will be produced during the second stage of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas condensate field development, is considered as the main source for all Southern Gas Corridor projects.
Lee added that the main challenge for Southern Gas Corridor projects, in particularly, for Nabucco project, is to secure sufficient gas to make them viable.
"This has always been the main difficulty faced by the Nabucco project and, in the case of this particular pipeline, it has been made more difficult by the large planned capacity and the fact that the project does not have any major gas suppliers among its backers," Lee said.
Nabucco pipeline with the maximum capacity of 31 billion cubic meters per year is expected to be laid from the Georgian-Turkish and Iraqi-Turkish borders to the Austrian Baumgarten over a distance of 3,900 kilometres.
Lee said, however, a shorter version of Nabucco, running from Turkey's border with Bulgaria to Austria, could still be an attractive option for the onward delivery of Azerbaijan's gas to Europe.
"It seems to me that the choice of a route onwards from Turkey's western border will depend very much on where Azerbaijan actually sells its gas," Lee said.
On Oct. 1, the southern gas Corridor projects (Nabucco, Trans Adriatic Pipeline and ITGI), submitted their final proposals to the Azerbaijani side, which will review them in accordance with previously announced criteria.
The decision on the preferable transportation route is expected to be made in the first quarter of 2012.Azerbaijan plans to export 10 billion cubic metres of gas within the Shah Deniz-2 project.
Among the considered by Shah Deniz consortium export routes is the SEEP project (south-east route), which was proposed by BP. It includes gas transportation through existing or the Turkish expanded infrastructure to the Balkan Peninsula and then distributes 10 billion cubic metres amongst smaller customers, including Greece, Bulgaria Serbia, Croatia and others via the existing gas pipeline system.