Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug.25
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
White Stream (also known as the Georgia-Ukraine-EU gas pipeline) was a proposed pipeline project to transport natural gas from the Caspian region to Romania and Ukraine with further supplies to Central Europe.
Commenting on the possibility of reviving the project, Katja Yafimava, senior research fellow in Oxford Institute for Energy Studies’ Natural Gas Research Program told Trend that the White Stream has never been a realistic project and with time its prospects have not improved.
“It has a number of problems the biggest one of which is that it simply has no realistic source of supply (all available Azerbaijani gas would be going via TANAP/TAP,” she said.
Edward Chow, a senior fellow in the Energy and National Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), for his part, told Trend that the main question about the proposal has to do with its economics.
"Where would the gas come from? Can it be delivered economically in southeastern Europe when compared to alternative supplies? Who are the commercial champions behind the project? Are they financially committed to ship their gas through the project? Are there creditworthy offtakers on the other end willing to commit financially to long-term contracts to buy the gas. Those are the questions that need to be answered first,” added Chow.
For the first time the White Stream idea was presented by Ukrainian officials in 2005.
The White Stream pipeline would branch-off from the existing South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) at a location south-west of Borjomi in Georgia. From there the pipeline would run west to a new compressor station on the Georgian Black Sea coast where the gas would be compressed to high pressure and taken across the Black Sea in water depths down to 2,000 metres depth to Constanta aria in Romania.
On 14 October 2013, White Stream was included in the renewed list of key selected energy infrastructure projects designated as a project of common interest, as a component of the Southern Gas Corridor pipeline chain.
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