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Monday, 01 December, 2008, 23:10 GMT | more >>

Washington nod for Nabucco pipe



By Upstream staff 

The US has thrown its full diplomatic weight behind the European Union's Nabucco pipeline project, which aims to bring gas from the Caspian to central Europe.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza said Nabucco - which will see Europe reduce its dependence on Russian supply - was as important to the US as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (TBC) oil pipeline had been in the 1990s.

"The Nabucco pipeline will be built, I am convinced, because it makes commercial sense," Reuters quoted Bryza as saying after talks with EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs.

"We are trying to build on the sucess of the last decade and expand the infrastructure put in place with the same commitment, the same intensity," he added.

Bryza said the planned 3300 kilometre pipeline across Turkey to central Europe was a much more cost-efficient way of transporting gas from Azerbaijan to Europe than the rival South Stream pipeline project being pushed by Russia's Gazprom.

"Nabucco makes eminently more commercial sense than any of the other projects," he told Reuters, comparing the US diplomatic effort to support the project with the intense campaign Washington waged in the late 1990s to promote the TBC pipeline.

"Follow your wallet. Do what makes sense," he added.

As with the TBC link, Bryza said the US was interested in Nabucco for both geopolitical and geo-economic reasons and would help the partners involved to synchronise their decisions.

Nabucco, which a six-company consortium is due to start building next year at an estimated cost of $6 billion, could carry gas from northern and western Iraq as well as Azerbaijan and offshore Caspian fields, he said.

By contrast, South Stream, which would run under the Black Sea from Russia to Bulgaria and then into central Europe with a spur via the Balkans into Italy, could cost between $20 billion and $30 billion to build, he said.

Moving gas from Azerbaijan through Nabucco would be 40% to 50% cheaper than through South Stream.


Friday, 22 February, 2008, 11:11 GMT  | last updated: Friday, 22 February, 2008, 11:11 GMT

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