Nabucco"s fate to be decided in early 2013

Despite the taken efforts, this year the main exporters of the Shah-Deniz project (BP, SOCAR, Statoil and Total) and the Nabucco-West pipeline consortium failed to sign the financial agreement. At the end of October 2012 representatives of Nabucco Pipeline Company assured journalists in Baku that in early December they will be able to conclude the agreement with Azerbaijan and it will give an impulse to the project development.

As the Nabucco-West consortium's representatives claimed earlier, they failed to "study and work out all required documents" to persuade the main exporters of the Shah-Deniz project of attractiveness of the route.

Now the Nabucco-West partners hope for the changes in the near year. Mikhail Andonov, chief of the Bulgarian energy holding, told the web site Financial that the Nabucco shareholders will have a meeting in Sofia on January 10, 2013. At the meeting the shareholders could approve Azerbaijan's proposal - if the Nabucco-West is chosen as the main route for the Azerbaijani gas deliveries to the European markets, then 50% shares of the pipeline consortium must be handed over to the main exporters of the Shah-Deniz project.

The Nabucco shareholders are Austrian OMV, German RWE, Hungarian MOL, Romanian Transgaz, Bulgarian Bulgargaz and Turkish BOTAS companies.-0-