Tuesday

19th Mar 2024

Moment of truth for EU gas pipeline

  • The opera tells the story of King Nabucco's (or Nebuchadnezzar's) persecution of Jews in Biblical times (Photo: A M)

The EU-endorsed Nabucco pipeline project is shrinking and might vanish by the end of June.

When executives from five energy firms - Botas, Bulgargaz, Mol, OMV and Transgaz - ate dinner in Vienna in October 2002 after watching the Verdi opera Nabucco, they envisaged a 3,900-km-long pipeline that would bring 31 billion cubic metres (bcm) a year of Azerbaijani, Iraqi and Turkmen gas from the Georgian-Turkish border to Austria.

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Get the EU news that really matters

Instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

In strategic terms, the project was designed to end Russia's monopoly on Caspian Sea gas imports and to weaken its political influence in central and eastern Europe.

Ten years later, it has shrunk and it has a new name: Nabucco West. The old concept is being called Nabucco Classic.

Nabucco West is to be a 1,300-km-long pipeline that will bring 10 bcm of Azerbaijani gas from the Bulgarian-Turkish border to Austria from 2017.

It is competing with two other options: the Tap pipeline to ship the gas from Turkey to Italy and the Seep pipeline to ship it from Turkey to Austria.

The companies which operate Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz gas field - which will supply the winning pipeline - are to decide by the end of June whether Nabucco West or Seep go through to a final round of competition against Tap.

The main shareholder in the Shah Deniz consortium, BP, is also the main firm behind Seep.

BP's chief of refining and marketing, Iain Conn, in a speech in Berlin on Thursday (24 May) said the selection will be made on "transparent criteria" and that "there is no pre-determined winner, the competition is fully open."

He added that Seep "offers an efficient routing into and through these strategically important markets" in south-east Europe. He did not say anything nice about Nabucco.

A BP spokesman, Toby Odone, told EUobserver on Friday that in any case Nabucco Classic is dead.

"To all intents and purposes it isn't going to happen. It's just not in the frame ... When Nabucco was first planned it talked about multiple sources [Turkmenistan, Iran] coming together. That just hasn't happened. All those agreements haven't come through," he said.

The Nabucco consortium and the European Commission say it is still alive.

"We are confident that Nabucco West will win the bid, and then I still think, that the original Nabucco concept will be discussed again," Leonhard Birnbaum, a board member of one of the Nabucco consortium companies, Germany's RWE, said on Thursday.

Commission spokeswoman Marlene Holzner told press on Friday: "To our understanding, the Nabucco Classic version is still on the table."

She noted that in strategic terms it does not matter whether Tap, Seep or Nabucco win, so long as the EU gets direct access to Caspian gas and the 10 bcm capacity can be increased in future.

In technical terms, if the wall of a gas pipeline is thick enough then more gas can be pumped through it under a higher pressure. If all the inter-governmental agreements are in place to lay one pipe, then it is easy to lay a second one along the same route.

"For the EU, it does not matter what the name of the pipeline is, but that the 'content is Nabucco'," Holzner said.

EU banks throw their weight behind Nabucco pipeline

The EU's Nabucco gas pipeline received a boost on Monday as the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank made a first written commitment that may lend the project up to €4 billion, half of its total cost.

Russia frets over EU plans to link up Caspian gas fields

Moscow expressed its "disappointment" on Tuesday over EU plans to build a Trans-Caspian pipeline connecting large Turkmen gas reserves to Azerbaijan, offering an alternative to the Russian monopoly on gas transports from that region.

Latest News

  1. Borrell: 'Israel provoking famine', urges more aid access
  2. Europol: Israel-Gaza galvanising Jihadist recruitment in Europe
  3. EU to agree Israeli-settler blacklist, Borrell says
  4. EU ministers keen to use Russian profits for Ukraine ammo
  5. Call to change EIB defence spending rules hits scepticism
  6. Potential legal avenues to prosecute Navalny's killers
  7. EU summit, Gaza, Ukraine, reforms in focus this WEEK
  8. The present and future dystopia of political micro-targeting ads

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Nordic Council of MinistersJoin the Nordic Food Systems Takeover at COP28
  2. Nordic Council of MinistersHow women and men are affected differently by climate policy
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersArtist Jessie Kleemann at Nordic pavilion during UN climate summit COP28
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCOP28: Gathering Nordic and global experts to put food and health on the agenda
  5. Friedrich Naumann FoundationPoems of Liberty – Call for Submission “Human Rights in Inhume War”: 250€ honorary fee for selected poems
  6. World BankWorld Bank report: How to create a future where the rewards of technology benefit all levels of society?

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsThis autumn Europalia arts festival is all about GEORGIA!
  2. UNOPSFostering health system resilience in fragile and conflict-affected countries
  3. European Citizen's InitiativeThe European Commission launches the ‘ImagineEU’ competition for secondary school students in the EU.
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersThe Nordic Region is stepping up its efforts to reduce food waste
  5. UNOPSUNOPS begins works under EU-funded project to repair schools in Ukraine
  6. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsGeorgia effectively prevents sanctions evasion against Russia – confirm EU, UK, USA

Join EUobserver

EU news that matters

Join us