Nabucco-West partners interested in ideas disregarding technical and financial issues

Gerhard Roys, head of the Austrian concern OMV, expects gas suppliers of the Nabucco-West to buy a share in the project, Dow Jones Newswires said on July 27 referring to Der Standard newspaper.

"I expect the suppliers to buy a share in the Nabucco project," Royss said in  his interview to the newspaper.

He also added that the consortium for development of the Azerbaijani gas condensate field Shah Deniz has expressed a desire to participate in the project and was invited to it.

OMV is one of the shareholders of Nabucco West project, which envisages construction of 1300 km-long pipeline (Bulgaria - 412 km, Romania - 469 km, Hungary - 384 km and Austria - 47 km).

Gas, which will be produced within the framework of the second stage of development of the gas condensate field Shah Deniz is considered as the main  source of the project. The remaining shareholders of the project are Hungarian FGSZ, Bulgarian Bulgargaz, Romanian Transgaz, Turkish BOTAS and German RWE.

Christian Dolezal, press officer of Nabucco Gas Pipeline International GmbH, also said that the Nabucco-West consortium is opened for the shareholders - gas makers. "We have seen interest on the side of the partners of the Shah-Deniz field development and consider this as a positive moment," he added.

Azerbaijan Centre of Oil Studies told Turan that "if Nabucco-West is going to get rid of its shares in the project, this means that they have problems with the gas pipeline funding, which is only 1300 km long." A month ago the Shah-Deniz project partners announced Nabucco-West winner of the route for Azerbaijani gas deliveries to Central and Eastern Europe. On the other side, if the Shah-Deniz project partners agree to buy part of Nabucco-West shares, what will they get from the commercial viewpoint? BP Azerbaijan President Rashid Javanshir said at the Caspian Oil & Gas 2012 conference that total costs of the Shakhleni-2 project and the infrastructure from the Caspian Sea to the customers in Europe will be   no less than $45 billion.

"It is clear today that  such Shakh-Deniz partners as SOCAR, TPAO and possibly soon BP, Statoil and Total will be involved in construction of TANAP gas pipeline. This is additional multi-billion costs. Foreign companies are not interested in extra costs, as the project expires in October 2036," a source from the Centre said.

Analysts of the Centre believe that behavior of the Nabucco-West partners shows that this small project has some "shady moments", so even partners themselves have no full picture of how to complete construction. For instance, one of Nabucco-West representatives recently offered to unite the project with TANAP. "Where did they get the idea that if they are united, then they will have Nabucco project? Instead of sling financial and technical issues the Nabucco-West partners are get carried away with new ideas," a source from the Centre said.-0--