Azerbaijan, Baku, June 28 / Trend A. Badalova/
Nabucco West gas pipeline project could still be realized in Southern Gas Corridor's later stage, Editor-in-Chief at Eurasia Energy Observer Andrej Tibold believes.
"Nabucco West could still be realized in a later stage, when new gas volumes are made available either in the Caspian Sea, Iraq, or maybe even Iran," Tibold wrote Trend via e-mail.
The consortium of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz field development on Friday officially announced the selection of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) as the route to transport its gas to Europe.
Another pipeline vying for Azerbaijani gas transportation to Europe was Nabucco West.
Comparing these two pipelines Tibold said that markets targeted by Nabucco, are less diversified than those targeted by TAP. However he added that TAP can also partially supply the gas to South Eastern Europe (which are the main target market for Nabucco West project).
The TAP project is designed to transport gas from the Caspian region via Greece and Albania and across the Adriatic Sea to the south of Italy and further to Western Europe. Gas which will be produced during the second stage of Shah Deniz field development is considered as the main source for the project.
The TAP route will be approximately 870 kilometers in length (Greece 550 km; Albania 210 km; offshore Adriatic Sea 15km; Italy 5 km).
TAP's initial pipeline capacity will be 10 billion cubic meters per year, but it will be easily expandable to 20 billion cubic meters per year. TAP's shareholders are AXPO of Switzerland (42.5 percent), Norway's Statoil (42.5 percent) and E.ON Ruhrgas of Germany (15 percent).
The construction of TAP is expected to start in 2015.