Thinking ahead: Reinhard Mitschek
'Nabucco nod will spur gas hunt'
A final investment decision to build the Nabucco gas pipeline - expected next year - should spur a multi-national search for gas to fill it, project leader Reinhard Mitschek said today.
The managing director of Nabucco said fears that repeated delays to the 3300 kilometre pipeline project to wean Europe off its dependence on Russian gas could mean Caspian gas being grabbed by countries like China were unfounded.
"I am sure that once the pipeline has been decided and the final investment decision is taken that will attract additional exploration and production activities in central Asia and the Middle East," Reuters quoted him telling told journalists on the sidelines of a conference in Sofia.
"We see gas from Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Iraq, Egypt, even from Iran and Russia. We do not exclude any source... We are confident that the pipeline will reach plateau level earlier than expected."
Nabucco is expected to open in 2014, if an intergovernmental agreement on the €7.9 billion ($10.41 billion) project can be agreed as expected in June.
But the president of StatoilHydro's Azeri gas business told Reuters at the conference that first gas from the second phase of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field in the Caspian - seen as a major source for Nabucco - would be delayed to from 2014 to around 2016 because of the lack of progress on Nabucco transit agreements.
Mitschek said that Europe's long-term gas demand growth was enough to justify several gas pipelines and that Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom's and Italian player Eni's South Stream pipeline, were not seen as a rival to Nabucco.
"I refuse an approach of either South Stream or Nabucco," he said.
Nabucco's shareholders are Austria's OMV, Hungary's MOL, Romania's Transgaz, Bulgaria's Bulgargaz, Turkey's Botas and Germany's RWE.