Friday, 20 January 2012The full implementation of the Nabucco gas pipeline becomes less probable every year, according to the the Special Envoy on Eurasian Energy Issues of the US State Department Richard Morningstar.
Morningstar expressed pessimism about Nabucco at the conference on "Natural gas and Ukraine's energy future", as cited by RIA Novosti and Trend News.
"It became clear that it is more difficult to implement the project from the financial and temporal points of view," Morningstar stressed.
He said that this Nabucco has been discussed for several years, and that the implementation of such a massive gas pipeline will require considerable time, in addition to the problem with securing sufficient supplies to fill up the pipe.
The "Nabucco" project is intended to transport natural gas from the Caspian region and Middle East to the EU countries. Its construction is scheduled to begin in 2013 with commissioning in 2017. Its maximum capacity will hit 31 billion cubic meters per year. "Nabucco" participants are the Austrian OMV, Hungarian MOL, Bulgarian Bulgargaz, Romanian Transgaz, Turkish Botas and German RWE.
Morningstar offered as an alternative to Nabucco a focus on gas supplies via other southern routes in order to provide gas to the most vulnerable countries located in the Balkans. He said that this idea can be implemented through the construction of a gas interconnector with Turkey.
"Of course, the "Southern Gas Corridor" will work, but its capacity will be accelerated gradually,' he said. "There will not be large volumes."
Nabucco, in which Bulgaria is a key participant, is now supposed to start pumping Caspian gas to Europe in 2017, after in 2015 its projected launch date was pushed back by 2 years. |
Friday, 20 January 2012
Novinite
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