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Shah Deniz consortium selects Nabucco as 2nd gas export route

28 June 2012 14:36 (UTC +04:00)

â€˜The Nabucco West project with a route running from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to Baumgarten (in Austria) has been selected as the single pipeline option for the potential export of Shah Deniz Stage 2 gas to Central Europe. Development of the South East Europe Pipeline (SEEP) project (led by BP), which had been assembled by Shah Deniz partners in collaboration with Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, will ceaseâ€™, BP said in a statement.

â€˜The decision was made on the basis of the publicly communicated selection criteria announced in 2011. The greater maturity of Nabucco West gave the consortium confidence that this project could be developed and delivered on the same timeline as Stage 2. The consortium will now cooperate with the Nabucco West project to optimise its scope, its technical studies and its commercial offer, told BP-Azerbaijan.

In February, the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) was selected for a southern route, beating off competition from rival ITGI.

Nabucco West is a short-cut version of Nabucco project, which envisages construction of the pipeline from Turkish-Bulgarian border to Austria. Gas to be produced within the second phase of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas field development is considered as the main source for the project. The current shareholders of Nabucco project are Bulgarian Energy Holding, Romanian Transgaz, Turkish Botas, Austrian OMV, German RWE and Hungary’s FGSZ.

The final decision on a pipeline route to export Azerbaijani gas to the European markets is expected to be made by Shah Deniz Consortium in 2013.
Note that, the Shah Deniz (SD) field was discovered in 1999. It is one of the worldâ€™s largest gas-condensate fields, with over 30 trillion cubic feet - 1 trillion cubic metres - of gas in place. It is located on the deep water shelf of the Caspian Sea, 70 km south-east of Baku, in water depths ranging from 50 to 500 m. BP operates Shah Deniz on behalf of its partners in the Shah Deniz Production Sharing Agreement. Plans for the estimated $25 billion project include two new bridge linked offshore platforms. Shah Deniz has also been working to assess the options that will deliver gas from Turkey onwards to Europe. During the evaluation process the Shah Deniz Export Negotiating Team (ENT), led by SOCAR and including BP, Statoil and Total, LUKoil, Naftiran Intertrade Co., TPAO.