'Capacity of Nabucco West to exceed 20 bcm per year'

The capacity of Nabucco West pipeline will exceed 20 billion cubic meters per year, Publics.bg reported with reference to Nabucco Gas Pipeline International GmbH Managing Director Reinhard Mitschek.

"First, the Consortium will make an open season for gas traders to book capacity in order to determine the intake and off-take points and then there will be a technical fine-tuning of the project, but its capacity will definitely be more than 20 bcm, even if the initial capacity is 10-16 bcm per year," Mitschek said during a conference call on Wednesday.

According to Mitschek, the pipeline's new capacity will mean lower investment costs and lower equity payments from shareholders, including the Bulgarian Energy Holding.

Nabucco West is a short-cut version of Nabucco project, which envisages construction of the pipeline from Turkish-Bulgarian border to Austria. According to the original conception of Nabucco project, 3,900-km pipeline will be laid from the Georgian-Turkish and Iraqi-Turkish borders to the Austrian Baumgarten.

Mitschek believes that consortium can secure financing from equity, international financial institutions such as European Investment Bank (EIB) and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European Energy Programme for Recovery (EEPR) and from export financing and commercial banks.

The project's current shareholders are Bulgarian Energy Holding, Romanian Transgaz, Turkish Botas, Austrian OMV, German RWE and Hungary's FGSZ.

Gas to be produced within the second phase of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas field development is considered as the main source for the project.

At present, the consortium of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz field development considers the options to export gas to the Southern And Central Europe, which include Nabucco base case, Nabucco West and SEEP. The pipeline route to Central European direction will be chosen by late June, 2012.

Mitschek is convinced that Nabucco West offers the best and most confident solutions.


/Trend/