Azerbaijan, Baku, May 10 / Trend A.Badalova /
Nabucco West still remains a quite realistic option to transport Azerbaijani gas to the European markets and has advantages over its competitor SEEP (South East Europe Pipeline West), editor-in-chief at Eurasia Energy Observer Andrej Tibold believes.
"Its /Nabucco West's/ main advantage over SEEP is, amongst others, that it already has the IGAs (intergovernmental agreements) and licensing needed for its construction. SEEP, on the other hand, has none of this yet," Tibold wrote Trend via an e-mail.
Obtaining this documentation is a time consuming process, and it remains to be seen whether SEEP will be able to finalize this, before the final investment decision on Shah Deniz-2 project is taken, Tibold believes.
Currently the consortium of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz fild development considers options to export gas to the southern and central Europe, which include Nabucco West and SEEP. By May 16, these two projects are expected to submit their formal proposals to the Shah Deniz consortium. The pipeline route to Central European direction will be chosen by late June, 2012.
Azerbaijan is going to export 10 billion cubic meters per year to Europe within the Shah Deniz-2 project. The final decision on a pipeline route to export Azerbaijani gas to the European markets is expected to be made in 2013.
Tibold believes that the chances of Nabucco West can increase with a success in a process of Trans Caspian Pipeline project implementation.
According to Tibold, Nabucco West could ship both Azerbaijani gas within the Shah Deniz-2 project and Turkmen gas, while SEEP is mainly oriented on shipping Shah Deniz-2 gas.
Nabucco Gas Pipeline project is designed to transport gas from the Caspian region and Middle East to the European countries. Nabucco West is a new conception, which was proposed by Nabucco consortium, and according to which the pipeline will be laid from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to the Austrian Baumgarten.
Proposed by BP SEEP envisages gas transportation through existing or expanded infrastructure of Turkey to the Balkan Peninsula, and then the distribution of 10 billion cubic meters to small buyers, including Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and others via the existing gas pipelines system.