Turkey Echoes Downsizing of Nabucco Pipeline, Promotes TANAP

Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz has echoed the proposal of the Nabucco Consortium for downsizing the previously ambitious EU-sponsored gas transit pipeline project, Nabucco.

Turkey's energy and natural resources minister said on Friday that it would not be appropriate to say that the Nabucco project was over, as cited by The Journal of Turkish Weekly.

Taner Yildiz said the project would probably survive as "Nabucco West" - a smaller, shorter pipeline, widely thought likely to begin at the Bulgarian-Turkish border rather than in Azerbaijan.

"In the end I believe whatever the name of the project is, it is more important that it is do-able," Yildiz told an interview with the Financial Times.

Yildiz said it was more realistic to begin with the Azebaijan-Turkey route, TANAP (Azerbaijan-Turkish Trans Anatolian gas pipeline), which could be linked up with another pipeline to bring gas to other European markets.

By the end of next month Ankara will conclude an agreement with Azerbaijan to set up a new pipeline to transport gas from the Caspian state's giant Shah Deniz field, Yildiz said.

"There is now no obstacle to the Shah Deniz project," he also said.

Yildiz's comments follow an announcement last month by Viktor Orb?n, Hungary's prime minister, that Mol, the Hungarian oil and gas company, was pulling out of the Nabucco consortium.

Orb?n said Nabucco was "in trouble", largely because of a rival pipeline promoted by Russia. Other companies in the Nabucco consortium, which include RWE of Germany and OMV of Austria, have already floated the idea of the slimmed down Nabucco west scheme.

Nabucco was supposed to become the new gas bridge from Asia to Europe and the flagship project in the Southern Gas and Energy Corridor.

The pipeline was planned to link the Eastern border of Turkey, to Baumgarten in Austria - one of the most important gas facilities in Central Europe - via Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, thus circumventing Russia.

The Nabucco Consortium presented Wednesday a revised, smaller version of the gas pipeline project called Nabucco West to the consortium developing the Shah Deniz II gas field in Azerbaijan.

The original pipeline was 3,900 kilometers long and ran from the Eastern border of Turkey to Baumgarten in Austria.

The Nabucco project aimed at lessening Europe's energy dependence on Russian energy was supposed to achieve a gas transport capacity of 31 billion cubic metres (bcm) a year.

Nabucco's shareholders are Austria's OMV, Germany's RWE, Hungary's MOL, Turkey's Botas, Bulgaria's Bulgarian Energy Holding (BEH) and Romania's Transgaz.

MOL and RWE have questioned the feasibility of the original version of Nabucco, threatening to leave the project company.

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