European Commission grants legislation exemptions for TAP and Nabucco West
By Aynur Jafarova
The European Commission adopted a formal decision granting the exemptions from the European Union (EU) legislation for the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) and the Nabucco West projects, the EU Delegation to Azerbaijan said on Friday.
This decision appears as an extension of the existing exemption on the third party access and tariff regulation earlier granted.
Nabucco West is a short-cut version of the Nabucco project, which envisages construction of a pipeline from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to Austria.
The TAP project is designed to transport gas from the Caspian region via Greece and Albania and across the Adriatic Sea to southern Italy and further into Western Europe. TAP's initial capacity will be 10 billion cubic meters per year, but it is easily expandable to 20 billion cubic meters.
As it was reported earlier, the national regulators of Austria, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria have confirmed the extension of the 50 percent exemption from the EU legislation on third party access granted to the Nabucco gas pipeline via a draft decision.
Exemption from current EU legislation, which stipulates that 100 percent network access has to be made available to companies not directly involved, can only be granted in the case of major cross-border projects.
According to the Head of the Delegation of the EU to Azerbaijan, Ambassador Roland Kobia, these decisions form another milestone in completing the Southern Gas Corridor, and show the commitment and seriousness of the EU to concretely work with Azerbaijan in the implementation of common projects of mutual interest.
"The decisions address the important outstanding regulatory and legislative issues for both TAP and Nabucco West projects. Now, the positions of the two projects have reached a comparable level that will enable Shah Deniz consortium to evaluate both pipelines adequately in view of the upcoming June decision on the European evacuation route for the Shah Deniz II gas", he said.
The Shah Deniz consortium is considering both TAP and Nabucco West. The consortium will make its final decision on the pipeline route in June and a final investment decision by October 2013.
Nabucco West and TAP are part of the Southern Gas Corridor, which is one of the EU's priority energy projects. The Southern Gas Corridor aims at diversifying the routes and sources of energy supply, thereby increasing secure delivery.
The gas which will be produced within the second stage of developing Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz gas condensate field is considered as the main source for the Nabucco West and TAP projects.
The Shah Deniz field which is one of the world's largest gas-condensate fields was discovered in 1999. Its reserves are estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas.
Overall, the Shah Deniz field has proved to be a secure and reliable supplier of gas to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey as well as Europe.