Nabucco decision concerning which pipeline system will bring Caspian gas from the Shah Deniz field to Europe will be reached not earlier than the middle of 2013, Austrian oil and gas company OMV AG stated.

Vienna / NationalTurk – ‘The Shah Deniz consortium (company which develops the gas field) has declared that they will definitely decide by middle of 2013,’ with a statemnt from OMV AG Chief Executive Office Gerhard Roiss.

The Austrian company OMV AG is part of a consortium behind Nabucco project that would bring Caspian gas in Azerbaijan via one of the proposed pipelines from the Caspian Sea region to Europe.

Nabucco Pipeline Project undergoes changes

Roiss confirmed that Nabucco is still being considered as one of the pipelines. He stated that he remained open to other solutions as long as gas would be delivered to Europe via the gas hub in Baumgarten, Austria.

Shah Deniz, the consortium developing the natural-gas field offshore Azerbaijan, has eliminated the Interconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy proposal from the pipeline options to carry gas to Europe, energy giant BP PLC (BP, BP.LN), which has a key role in Shah Deniz.

Nabucco Pipeline Project : Losing Strategic Importance ?

Nabucco will lose its strategic importance with changing its original conception and becoming smaller pipeline than it was initially planned and thus one of the four proposals aimed for delivering Caspian gas to Europe is out of game, senior advisor on international energy and climate policy at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin, Friedemann Mueller believes.

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.

Recently Nabucco Gas Pipeline International has submitted the project’s new conception to the Shah Deniz consortium. The consortium’s official representative told 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.

Nabucco Project : The original concept

Nabucco project ‘s original concept was 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 in Austria. The construction of Nabucco pipeline is considered to be launched in 2013 and the first supplies will start in 2017. The length of the Nabucco pipeline will be about 3,900 kilometers with maximum capacity of 31 billion cubic meters a year. The Nabucco project’s shareholders include Bulgarian Energy Holding, Turkish Botas, Austrian OMV, German RWE, Hungary’s FGSZ and Romanian Transgaz, each holding 16.67 % of shares.

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