TANAP Won't Hinder Nabucco Pipeline, Spokesman Says

The project of Turkey and Azerbaijan for a natural gas pipeline TANAP (Trans Anatolian Pipeline) will not hurt the prospects for the Nabucco project, according to a Nabucco GmbH spokesperson.

"TANAP won't stop the construction of Nabucco. TANAP is an additional opportunity, and it could be linked to Nabucco and feed natural gas into it," stated Christian Dolezal, spokesperson of Nabucco Gas Pipeline International, in an interview for the Bulgarian National Radio Tuesday.

Dolezal's comment came just as Turkey and Azerbaijan signed their agreement for the construction of TANAP at the 20th meeting of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization.

TANAP is supposed to cost EUR 7 B, and to be constructed in 6 years.

As a result of the failure to procure sufficient gas supplies, Nabucco is now expected to survive as "Nabucco West" - a smaller, shorter pipeline, widely thought likely to begin at the Bulgarian-Turkish border rather than in Azerbaijan.

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 has presented 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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