Azernews.Az

By Aynur Jafarova

Both Nabucco West and Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) projects which are part of the Southern Gas Corridor will be built in the long term, political risk expert Alexander Jackson believes.

"Azerbaijan has plenty of gas over the medium and long term from fields like Absheron, Umid-Babek, and Zafar-Mashal," Trend news agency quoted Jackson as saying on Monday.

According to the analyst, Iraqi, Eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea and Turkmen gas could also be potential sources for these pipelines.

"There's certainly no supply shortage, so it is likely that both pipelines could be built -- but only in the long term," Jackson added.

According to Jackson, if Nabucco West is chosen as the final transportation route, in the medium term, it would have its capacity expanded to 31 billion cubic meters (bcm), which would absorb most of the supply.

"It's unlikely that an alternative pipeline would be seriously planned for at least a decade," Jackson added.

Currently, the consortium developing Azerbaijan's giant Shah Deniz field in the Caspian Sea is considering both TAP and Nabucco West as options for its gas transportation to Europe. The final decision on the pipeline route will be made in June 2013.

Nabucco West is a short-cut version of the Nabucco project, which envisages construction of a pipeline from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to Austria. Gas to be produced within the second phase of Shah Deniz gas condensate field development is considered as the main source for the project.

The TAP project is designed to transport gas from the resource-rich Caspian region via Greece and Albania and across the Adriatic Sea to southern Italy and further into western Europe. TAP's initial pipeline capacity will be 10 billion cubic meters per year, but it is easily expandable to 20 billion cubic meters.