Brussels, 25/06/2013 (Agence Europe) - By the end of June 2013, the Shah Deniz II consortium will decide which pipeline it will use to carry gas from Azerbaijan to the European Union. It has two choices - Nabucco or TAP.
The planned Nabucco pipeline is shorter now that Turkey has built its own gas pipeline from the Anatolia region, and has picked up in popularity. It would take a shorter route from Austria to the border between Bulgaria and Turkey, passing through Hungary and Romania. Its new name is Nabucco West and it would be less costly to build. Its shareholders, Austrian energy giant OMV, Germany's RWE, Hungary's MOL, Romania's Transgaz and Turkey's Botas, have been able to improve their bid to the Shah Deniz II consortium, which is piloted by British Petroleum (25.5%), Norway's Statoil (25.5%) and Azerbaijan's Socar (10%).
Azerbaijan must choose between Nabucco West and TAP (Trans-Adriatic Pipeline), a planned pipeline piloted by Norway's Statoil, Switzerland's Axpo and Germany's E.ON, which would run from the border between Greece and Turkey to Italy via Albania. The advantage of TAP is that it is shorter and a little cheaper, but Nabucco has been strengthened now that France's GDF Suez has joined it.
Meetings between political leaders have been held over the past week, lobbying hard. With Turkey's backing, the presidents of Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania sent a letter last week to the Azeri president, Ilham Aliyev, to try to win support for the Nabucco option. On 21 June, President Aliyev of Azerbaijan met with the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, who has been backing the Nabucco pipeline. Barroso said on Friday that “both Nabucco West and TAP are of strategic importance for diversification of our gas supplies for our single energy market. I am therefore confident that both routes could ultimately be built, once we scale up the Southern Gas Corridor beyond the currently available gas with further resources. This can be a win-win situation”. (EH/transl.fl)