Azernews.Az

A minister from the semi-autonomous region of Northern Iraq has said the region could provide natural gas to make the Nabucco gas pipeline feasible.
"We can provide 14 or 15 billion cubic meters to make the project work," EurActiv, a news website covering EU policies, quoted Ashti Hawrami, the Kurdish regional administration’s minister for natural resources, as saying.
According to him, Northern Iraq possesses an estimated 6-8 trillion cubic meters of gas reserves. Despite tensions between Northern Iraq and the country's central government over who should shoulder the cost of extracting the gas, the minister said he was optimistic that the issue would be resolved quickly.
Iraq is currently regarded as one of the main suppliers of gas for the Nabucco project, designed to carry gas from the Caspian region and the Middle East to the EU.
An official of the Nabucco project, Christian Dolezal, said earlier that given that the second phase of production at Azerbaijan's vast Shahdaniz field is due to begin in 2016, first gas deliveries through Nabucco, which is scheduled for completion in 2014, will be carried out using Iraqi gas. In its first stage, the Nabucco project reportedly expects Iraqi gas in the volume of 8 billion cubic meters, and Azerbaijan is expected to supply up to 10 billion cubic meters.
The Nabucco project, worth 7.9 billion euros, envisions building a 3,300-kilometer pipeline from eastern Turkey to the Austrian capital Vienna. Construction work is expected to begin in 2011 and first supplies are scheduled for 2014. The pipeline’s maximum capacity will be 31 billion cubic meters per year. The Nabucco consortium includes the Austrian OMV, Hungarian MOL, Bulgarian Bulgargaz, Romanian Transgaz, Turkish Botas and German RWE, each holding 16.67 percent of the stock.