Brussels, 11/02/2008 (Agence Europe) - In application of article 22 of the Community directive 2003/55/EC on the common rules for the internal market for gas, the European Commission approved, on Friday 8 February, the exemption to regulated third-party access, in accordance with pre-defined conditions, for the Austrian section of the Nabucco gas pipeline. Nonetheless, the Commission has called upon the Austrian energy regulator to include additional safeguards concerning future allocations of capacity, in order to ensure that the planned gas pipeline has a positive effect on competition. “The Commission decision on Nabucco shows our support for this project, which will boost Europe's efforts to diversify our supply sources and our gas supply routes. The project is important not only for the countries involved but will also contribute to strengthening competition and promoting security in gas supply for the European Union as a whole”, said the European Commissioner for Energy, Andris Piebalgs.
The Nabucco consortium had asked for an exemption to the general rule on regulated access to third parties in each of the four member states involved in the project - Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. This manner of exemption is provided for by Community legislation, to allow new major infrastructure products (new conduits, interconnections between member states, NGL installations or storage, etc), to determine more freely the capacity allocations and transport tariffs. The safeguards to which the exemption is subject include a capacity limit, to prevent a dominant company from reserving itself more than half of the outgoing capacity from the gas pipeline in Austria, and rules aiming to guarantee a transparent and non-discriminatory allocation of capacity to third parties.
Of a length of 3300 km and with an annual capacity of 30 billion m², the Nabucco gas pipeline will link Europe with the Caspian Sea region to provide the EU with gas from the Middle East and Central Asia via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria (EUROPE 9551). The start of the work has been scheduled for 2009, with the ability of the pipeline envisaged for 2012.
It is also worth noting that the European coordinator for the Nabucco priority energy project, Jozias van Aartsen, was to travel to Ankara on Monday, to discuss obstacles to be faced by Nabucco in Turkey with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr van Aartsen is expected to urge Ankara to step up its commitment in favour of the project. “If they are seeking a relationship with the EU, this is one of the ways they can prove that they really want a future relationship with the EU”, he told this weekend's Financial Times. Ankara has on several occasions affirmed its commitment to the Nabucco project, and the national energy provider Botas is already part of the consortium which will build a gas pipeline. At this stage, however, Turkey has not agreed on an assessment framework for the use of the pipeline. Furthermore, for political reasons - deep differences in opinion between Ankara and Paris on the question of the Armenian genocide in particular - Turkey is continuing to block the participation of the French energy company Gaz de France in the Nabucco consortium, which was joined early last week by a sixth partner, the German RWE. (E.H.)