Brussels, 15/11/2010 (Agence Europe) - Although its Italian-Russian rival project, South Stream, is making rapid progress, the pan-European gas pipeline project, Nabucco, is still very much in contention and is continuing its own path towards its construction, step by step. The rapprochement announced last week between Turkey, via which gas from the Caspian Sea and Central Asian areas will transit, and Turkmenistan, a potential supplier country, constitutes a new step towards the completion of Nabucco, a gas pipeline which aims to reduce dependency on Russia by by-passing the territory of the main supplier of gas to the EU. Meeting in Turkmenbashi on 12 November, President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhammadov and his Turkish opposite number Abdullah Gül expressed their hopes of developing cooperation between their countries in supplying the global markets with gas from Turkmenistan via alternative routes. The South gas corridor project and the Nabucco gas pipeline, which will bring gas from Central Asia to Europe, are therefore affected.
At this stage, no gas sales contracts have been signed to supply Nabucco, the annual full capacity of which will be 31 billion m3, but the partners in the consortium - Austria's ÖMV, MOL of Hungary, Transgaz of Romania, Bulgaria's Bulgargaz, the Turkish Botas and Germany's RWE, which own 16.67% of the shares each - negotiating gas contracts with Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Iraq.
It is worth noting that in early September, the EIB, the EBRD and the International Finance Corporation agreed on a pre-funding plan of €4 billion for the construction of the project, the total cost of which has been estimated at €7.9 billion. Work is expected to start in early 2012, with operability in 2015. (E.H./transl.fl)