The Nabucco consortium to build a pipeline bringing natural gas to Europe via Turkey signed agreements with transit countries Wednesday, predicting that the first supply contracts would be sealed by the end of the year.
The Nabucco consortium to build a pipeline bringing natural gas to
Europe
via
Turkey
signed agreements with transit countries Wednesday, predicting that the first
supply contracts would be sealed by the end of the year.
Government ministers and consortium companies at the signing sought to dispel
growing skepticism about the pipeline's viability, just weeks after they
announced a two year delay in the pipeline's target date for completion.
Increased gas supplies in Turkmenistan and the prospect of stronger gas demand
in Europe, in the wake of Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, had
improved prospects for the project at both ends, they said.
"Nabucco has made the final step from a project to reality," Gunther
Oettinger, the European Union's energy commissioner, told a hall filled with
hundreds of dignitaries at the start of an elaborate ceremony in
Kayseri
,
central
Turkey
.
The project aims to build a 3900 kilometer pipeline with annual capacity of 31
billion cubic meters of gas per year, from
Turkey
's
borders with
Iraq
and
Georgia
, to
the Baumgarten hub in
Vienna
. It
assumes natural gas supplies from
Azerbaijan
,
Iraq
and
Turkmenistan
.
Energy ministers from
Turkey
,
Bulgaria
,
Romania
,
Hungary
and
Austria
repeatedly stressed the pipeline's strategic importance in diversifying
Europe
's
energy supplies.
Russia
currently has a monopoly on the supply of gas from the Caspian region to the
EU.
"We are gathered here to say: Yes, Nabucco will happen," said
Bulgarian energy minister Traiko Traykov.
Speaking to reporters before the ceremony, Reinhard Mitschek, Managing Director
of the Nabucco consortium, said that after Project Support Agreements were
signed with each of the transit countries Wednesday, he expected to start
signing gas supply contracts by the end of the year.
The PSA agreements were needed first to create the necessary legal framework
for financing, Mitschek said. The bilateral agreements include standard
government assurances in some 40 areas, including land acquisitions, taxes and
imports of construction materials.
Most concerns over Nabucco's success have focused on whether the consortium
will be able to find enough gas to fill the pipeline. Wednesday, consortium
members sought to dismiss those concerns.
Turkmenistan
has a
growing interest in supplying Nabucco, because
Russia
is
buying just one fifth of the Turkmen gas it used to, said Stefan Judisch, chief
executive of supply and trading at
Germany
's RWE
AG (RWEOY, RWE.XE). "They have more gas than they can sell."
An audit of
Turkmenistan
's
South
Yolotan
field to be delivered to the Turkmen government this month will upgrade
estimates of the field's size, making it the world's second largest field after
South Pars, in the
Persian Gulf
, the audit company, London-based
Gaffney, Cline and Associates said last month.
South
Yolotan
alone has enough gas to supply all of
Europe
for
36 years, Judisch said, adding that a pipeline to take it across the
Caspian
Sea
to feed into Nabucco could be built within 3 years to 4 years, given
political will.
Meanwhile, Judisch said he learned Tuesday that
Uzbekistan
had
also expressed interest in selling gas through Nabucco.
Israel
,
which is developing new offshore gas fields, also has approached the
consortium, Judisch said.
At the same time, the consortium has revised up its estimates of how much
demand there will be for natural gas in
Europe
,
following the meltdown earlier this year at
Japan
's
Fukushima
plant, which triggered a scaling back of plans for nuclear power production in
Europe
,
especially
Germany
. Instead
of a projected gap of 150 billion cubic meters per year between supply and
demand of gas by 2025, there's now a projected gap of 180 bcm, said Gerhard
Roiss, chief executive of
Austria
's OMV
AG (OMVKY, OMV.VI), using company estimates.
But there have long been doubts as to the pipeline's viability, and those were
fuelled last month when the consortium said it was delaying construction by two
years. The target to deliver the first gas is now to be delivered in 2017.
Richard Morningstar, the U.S. Secretary of State's special envoy for Eurasian
Energy urged
Turkey
and
Azerbaijan
to
finalize a transit agreement needed for Nabucco to progress. Oettinger,
meanwhile, said
Iraq
would
need help with its own energy market before it could export gas, and that
Nabucco needed new partners from the supplier states to join up.
Costs are also expected to rise substantially from the consortium's original
EUR7.9 billion estimate. Mitschek dismissed those expectations as
"speculation," but said a cost review was underway.
Meanwhile, South Stream, a rival Russian pipeline project to bring gas from
Central
Asia
to
Europe
, has a target launch date of
2015.
Judisch blamed the Nabucco delay on BP PLC (BP, BP.LN), which runs the consortium
working Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field--and which recently made public its
concerns about Nabucco's viability.
"Shah Deniz initially said it would announce who gets the gas [from the
field] by March 2011. They haven't made this decision, and consequently we
delayed our construction because we will not build an empty pipeline,"
Judisch said.
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