Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb. 21 / Trend A.Badalova/
New conception of Nabucco shows that the project consortium acknowledged the necessity in a smaller pipeline for the initial opening of the Southern Gas Corridor, editor-in-chief at Eurasia Energy Observer Andrej Tibold told Trend.
Nabucco consortium proposed a new conception of the project, which envisages the construction of the pipeline much smaller that it was previously planned. According to the new conception, submitted to the Consortium of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas field development, Nabucco pipeline will be laid from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to the Austrian Baumgarten.
Earlier Dow Jones Newswires reported with the reference to aware people, that Nabucco project consortium proposed to downsize Nabucco gas pipeline's capacity at 31 billion cubic meters by almost twice.
The original concept of Nabucco project, designed to transport gas from the Caspian region and Middle East to the European countries, envisaged the construction of the pipeline from the Georgian-Turkish and Iraqi-Turkish borders to Baumgarten. The pipeline was expected to run through Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria over a distance of 3,900 kilometres.
"The new proposal by Nabucco to half its capacity and only cover the stretch from Bulgaria to Austria shows that Nabucco has acknowledged that the initial opening up of the Southern Corridor requires a smaller sized pipeline, such as South Eastern European Pipeline (SEEP)," Tibold said.
Although it is not completely clear to what extent SEEP plans are realistic, it should not be excluded that an adjusted version of SEEP could be considered as an alternative, Tibold believes.
On Oct. 1, Nabucco, ITGI and TAP, which aim to transport gas from the second phase of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz field development, submitted their final proposals to the Azerbaijani side, which will review them in accordance with the previously announced criteria. Azerbaijan plans to export 10 billion cubic meters of gas within the Shah Deniz-2 project.
Earlier this week Shah Deniz consortium excluded ITGI from the list of those being considered to export Azerbaijani gas to the European countries.
Shah Deniz consortium is currently considering three possible export routes: Nabucco, South East Europe Pipeline (SEEP) and TAP.
SEEP, which was proposed by BP, envisages gas transportation through existing or expanded infrastructure of Turkey to the Balkan Peninsula, and then the distribution of ten billion cubic meters to small buyers, including Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and others via the existing gas pipelines system.