Egypt views the planned Nabucco pipeline which is due to deliver natural gas from central Asia to Europe, as a strategically important project and is ready to support, Egyptian Petroleum Minister Sameh Fahmy said Tuesday.
"I would hereby like to confirm that Egypt is fully committed to playing a positive role in the Nabucco (project)," as a potential supplier country, Fahmy told a conference on the projected 3,300-kilometer Nabucco pipeline.
Although Egypt has no direct geographical links to the planned Azerbaijan-Turkey-Europe route of the Nabucco pipeline, the African country as well as Iraq and potentially even Iran are viewed as possible gas suppliers for the pipeline.
For now most gas committed for the Nabucco pipeline would come from Azerbaijan and other suppliers such as Egypt would have to build new delivery routes or arrange swap agreements on gas shipments in favor of the Nabucco pipeline.
Egypt has annual gas production of 65 billion cubic meters, Fahmy said. He also urged governments to give priority to financing energy projects despite the economic crisis.
Some analysts have said additional suppliers will be vital for the Nabucco pipeline project to become feasible as Azerbaijan, a southwestern Caspian Sea nation, may not have enough proven gas supplies to justify the pipeline's financing costs, estimated at about EUR7.9 billion.
Nabucco is also bound to compete for scarce gas in Azerbaijan, called Interconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy, or ITGI, which started pumping Azeri gas to Greece via Turkey in 2007. Italian energy company Edison SpA (EDN.MI), ITGI's main partner, wants to extend the ITGI pipeline to southern Italy, aiming to supply about 10 billion cubic meters of the Azeri gas a year to southern Europe.
Eni SpA (E), Edison's larger Italian rival, is a partner in another pipeline project that may also tap gas supplies in the Caspian. Eni is building the pipeline, known as South Stream and due go online in 2013, with Russian natural gas monopoly OAO Gazprom (GAZP.RS). South Stream, which will also ship gas from Siberia, will connect Europe through a link under the Black Sea to Bulgaria.
Spooked by a conflict between Russian and Georgia last summer, which raised questions about safety of energy shipments from the Caspian region, the E.U. also began to look for gas supplies from Africa.
The European Commission has given its political support to the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline, a project designed to bring gas from Nigeria to the Mediterranean and eventually to Europe.
Africa's role is however likely to remain limited, providing about 20 billion cubic meters, mainly from Algeria, in 2020.