Todays Zaman: Nabucco - Dead and Buried

The decision at the end of June by Azerbaijan to select the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) to transport gas from their Shah Deniz II gas field to the EU market -- via Greece, Albania and Italy -- finally killed off the much-talked-about Nabucco pipeline.

Nabucco is a sad story: A big and ambitious idea that went pear-shaped. When the EU first came up with the Nabucco blueprint some 10 years ago, it was clearly a strategic project with the goal of creating a gargantuan pipeline that would go some way toward ridding the EU of the notoriously difficult Russian Gazprom and the stranglehold it has over certain parts of the EU gas market. Brussels was sick and tired of Moscow's gas politics and the leverage this gave the Kremlin. Efforts sped up in 2009 following the Russia-Ukraine gas war, when Russia turned off the gas tap and a number of EU countries including Bulgaria and Slovakia found themselves without gas for days in the middle of winter. Energy diversification was much talked about, and Nabucco became the EU's flagship energy project. Nabucco was supposed to be a lengthy 3,300 kilometers, starting from Turkey's eastern border and ending up in Austria, carrying some 31 billion cubic meters of gas per annum once the pipeline reached full capacity toward the 2020s. Indeed, Nabucco was talked about so much it became labeled an anti-Russian project, which made some countries in Central Asia wary of getting involved in it.  MORE