Terms of Nabucco construction maybe changed

The construction of Nabucco gas pipeline project, which is designed to transport gas from the Caspian region and Midlle East to the European countries may start in 2015, Bloomberg reported with the reference to Austrian OMV's gas head Hans-Peter Floren.

"Should the owners of the BP Plc-led Shah Deniz field in Azerbaijan make a decision on whom to award its gas next year, construction could start in 2015 and be completed in 2018," Floren said at the company's annual shareholder meeting in Vienna.

According to OMV CEO Gerhard Roiss, Nabucco project is "more important than ever" as it's needed to transport gas from the OMV-Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) gas find in the Black Sea. "It's important to have a pipeline in this region," he said.

He also stressed that the Nabucco project may now be cut to "Nabucco West" starting at the Turkish-Bulgarian border and be complimented by the Azeri-Turkish Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline (TANAP).

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.

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.


/Trend/