Nabucco offers Shah Deniz consortium most competitive package - Reinhard Mitschek
By Gulgiz Dadashova
Nabucco Gas Pipeline International GmbH (NIC) has submitted a Pipeline Decision Support Package to the consortium developing Azerbaijan's giant Shah Deniz field in the Caspian Sea.
NIC reported that the Pipeline Decision Support Package contains all of the important elements requested by the producers to establish a commercial value chain for Azerbaijani gas.
The consortium developing the Shah Deniz gas condensate field is considering TAP and Nabucco West pipelines as options for gas transportation to Europe. Both are part of the Southern Gas Corridor, a major energy project for the EU seeking to diversify routes and sources of supply. A final decision on the pipeline route is due to be made in June 2013.
Commenting on the document submission, Nabucco CEO Reinhard Mitschek stated that NIC offers the Shah Deniz II consortium the most competitive package to facilitate their final route decision.
"We look forward to the continued cooperation with the producers in the coming months. We are confident that Nabucco offers a win-win situation for shippers and producers," Mitschek said in a statement.
The publicly-announced criteria for the selection of the final route by the Shah Deniz II Consortium includes engineering design, project deliverability, financial deliverability, alignment and transparency, commerciality, operability, scalability and public policy considerations.
Earlier today, it was reported that the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) project has submitted a comprehensive transportation bid to the consortium developing Azerbaijan's giant Shah Deniz field in the Caspian Sea.
The Decision Support Package or DSP will be assessed by the Shah Deniz consortium as part of the project selection process.
Nabucco West is a short-cut version of Nabucco project, which envisages construction of the pipeline from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to Austria. Gas to be produced within the second phase of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas condensate field development is considered as the main source for the project. The project's current shareholders are Bulgarian Energy Holding, Romanian Transgaz, Turkish Botas, Austrian OMV, German RWE and Hungary's FGSZ.
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.
Reserves of the Shah Deniz field are estimated at 1.2 trillion
cubic meters of gas.
The contract to develop the offshore field was signed in June 1996.
Shareholders of the project are: BP (operator) and Statoil with
25.5 percent each, NICO, Total, Lukoil and SOCAR with 10 percent
each, and TPAO with 9 percent.