Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb. 23 / Trend /
Azer Ahmedbeyli, Trend analytical centre expert
Nabucco will lose its strategic importance with changing its original conception and becoming smaller pipeline than it was initially planned, senior advisor on international energy and climate policy at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin, Friedemann Mueller believes.
It is quite a fair statement which is hard to deny. Indeed, Nabucco is turning into relatively small pipeline project with shorter route and double-reduced capacity and the name changed but anyway it is better than to lose face. The favourite child of EU nursed for over ten years is again not allowed to die. Why?
The united Europe is considered a global power that is not befitted to waste words or to quit. Nobody must have any doubt about the EU's cohesion and performance capability; otherwise an idea can come to mind that the Union is weak and invalid. Fresh examples of what is called the EU's cohesion and unity show themselves in giving the second package of bailout to Greece to drag it out of an imminent default, as well as a painful decision to impose an embargo on Iranian oil imports although at the second try.
Nabucco seem to be in the same range. It is now unacceptable for EU to admit the project's failure after years of talks and negotiations never mind the money spent, efforts made and people involved. EU's ambitions are the answer to the question why Nabucco is still alive albeit transformed.
One of the four proposals aimed for delivering Caspian gas to Europe is out of game. Yesterday Marlene Holzner, a spokesperson of EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger, commenting possible options of delivery of Caspian gas to Europe, noted that the European Commission may support a combination of pipelines instead of entire one if they will meet the EU's requirements namely if there are smaller pipelines, they should not have less capacity than that of Nabucco and should have internationally based agreement. Today, as is well known, Nabucco has been the only project supported with an intergovernmental agreement.
In spite of private interests of states and companies or any inner contradictions amongst member states any decision will be adjusted with the EU's common interests. This is why the EU, other conditions being equal, will insist on decision in favour of Nabucco or, to be more precise, Nabucco-West.
Recently Nabucco Gas Pipeline International has submitted the project's new conception to the Shah Deniz consortium. The consortium's official representative told Trend that, according to the new conception, which is called Nabucco-West, the pipeline will be laid from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to the Austrian Baumgarten, which will allow shortening materially the length of pipeline. Earlier Dow Jones Newswires reported with the reference to a source familiar with the issue that the consortium of Nabucco project proposed a pipeline which will have roughly half of Nabucco's initial capacity of 31 billion cubic meters.
The original concept of Nabucco project, designed to transport gas from the Caspian region and Middle East to the European countries is intended for the construction of a pipeline from the Georgian-Turkish and Iraqi-Turkish borders to Baumgarten. The construction of Nabucco pipeline is planned to start in 2013 and the first supplies will start in 2017. The length of the pipeline will be about 3,900 kilometers with maximum capacity of 31 billion cubic meters a year. The project's shareholders include Bulgarian Energy Holding, Turkish Botas, Austrian OMV, German RWE, Hungary's FGSZ and Romanian Transgaz, each holding 16.67 percent of shares.