Azeri Dance with Nabucco Continues

A senior official of SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state oil company, has said the country will be able to supply enough gas to fill the planned Nabucco pipeline project.

SOCAR first vice-president, Khoshbakht Yusifzade said the company is planning to increase gas production from the Shah Deniz gas condensate field alone to up to 25bn cubic metres by 2017

Nabucco's planned capacity for 2017 is 26-32bn cubic metres.

In January, José Manuel Barroso, President of European Commission and Ilham Aliyev, President of Azerbaijan, signed a joint declaration on gas delivery for Europe.

While Azerbaijan committed itself to supplying substantial volumes of gas to the European Union, it has so far only guaranteed supply of 10bn cubic metres of gas to Nabucco, which will be sufficient for the first stage of the pipeline's operation.

Nabucco's head of communications, Christian Dolezal, agrees that the company sees Azerbaijan as the main supplier for the pipeline.

Speaking at the fifth Caspian Oil and Gas Energy and Transportation conference in Baku, Dolezal said that talks were also under way on supplies from Iraq.

Dolezal commented on financing, a second challenge facing the pipeline alongside gas supply.

"The agreements on a Southern Energy Corridor signed between Azerbaijan and the European Commission can be seen as one of the first legislative foundations for Nabucco. The Nabucco shareholders are continuing talks with Azerbaijan and, depending on the outcome of the negotiations, a decision will be taken on project financing. We expect the decision to be taken by the end of the year," Dolezal said. He said that Nabucco was holding talks with the International Finance Corporation and the European Investment Bank.

On construction, Dolezal said:

"We have completed detailed front-end engineering in Turkey and began front-end engineering work to the Georgian border this year. The consortium has held 150 public hearings on the project. We have to reach agreement with 300,000 land owners on laying the pipeline. We expect to have tackled all these issues by the end of the year."

Roland Kobia, the European Union's representative in Baku, told the conference that the EU saw Azerbaijan as a link in the Southern Corridor project.

"Europe's demand for gas is growing and we are, therefore, interested in new suppliers and Azerbaijan is one of these important suppliers."

Commenting on Russia's stance on the Nabucco project, Kobia said Moscow should give up Cold War stereotypes.

Russia has purportedly been undermining Nabucco by exercising its political and economic influence in support of the Gazprom backed South Stream project (Read More HERE)

"We live in a globalized world and the EU and sovereign countries decide on their relations themselves. We respect the sovereign right of Azerbaijan and other countries."

Kobia said, however, that Russia remained a main EU partner on energy.

"We are against monopolies in the markets and will, therefore, support all alternative projects."

Sources: Fineko/abc.az, 1news.az