Azernews.Az

Nabucco West is the only Southern Gas Corridor project with a ratified intergovernmental agreement, the Managing Director of the Nabucco Gas Pipeline International GmbH, Reinhard Mitschek, said in an interview with Trend news agency in Baku.

"We have clear framework. We have intergovernmental agreement, which was also ratified by the parliaments of /transit/ countries," Mitschek said.

Talking about the advantages of Nabucco West over its competitor Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), Mitschek said that one of them is the scalability of the project.

"We can transport at commercial and competitive conditions from 10 to 23 billion cubic metres of gas. We can ultimately increase our capacity and by increasing capacity we can reduce transportation tariffs," Mitschek said.

According to Mitschek, another advantage of Nabucco West is the capability of the pipeline to reach all South-East European countries by small interconnections.

In June the consortium of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas field development selected Nabucco West as the single pipeline option for the potential export of Shah Deniz Stage 2 gas to Central Europe.

Nabucco West is a short-cut version of Nabucco project, which envisages construction of the pipeline from Turkish-Bulgarian border to Austria.

The project's current shareholders are Bulgarian Energy Holding, Romanian Transgaz, Turkish Botas, Austrian OMV, German RWE and Hungary's FGSZ, and each of them holds 16.67-percent share.

Currently, the Shah Deniz consortium considers two options to deliver its gas to Europe - TAP and Nabucco West. The final decision on a pipeline route will be made in 2013.