If Nabucco's length is reduced, it could lose half of its carrying capacity

• Thursday, February 23, 01:39

Baku. Nabucco's length and capacity could be reduced as twice and then the gas pipeline will be just a part of the European gas infrastructure without transporting gas to Asia. In this case new TANAP gas pipeline, which is designed by Turkey and Azerbaijan, could deliver Asian gas to Europe via Turkey.

The Wall Street Journal reported that parameters of the Nabucco gas pipeline could be revised.  Nabucco could have a new route: its starting point will be Bulgaria and the final point Austria. The gas pipeline's capacity could be reduced as twice - to 16 billion cub.m. a year. Christian Dolezal, official representative of Nabucco, confirmed to the Russian Kommersant newspaper that the project partners - Austrian OMV, Hungarian MOL, Bulgarian Bulgargaz, Romanian Transgaz, Turkish Botas and German RWE - consider "various options", but the decision has not been taken yet.

The option, which envisages transportation of gas via TANAP through Turkey to Bulgaria and further to the shortened version of Nabucco, is more acceptable, Vitally Kryukov from IFD-Capital said. He believes that it will be difficult for the Nabucco shareholders to implement such a wide-scale project, while "at this point Europe does not care about the route of the Asian gas delivery to EU, it needs it as soon as possible." Valerii Nesterov from "Troyka Dialogue agreed and added that if TANAP is built, "then South Stream project could be partially revised, its capacity could be reduced."