New Europe: TAP, Nabucco and SEEP still in EU pipeline race

On 20 February Shah Deniz, the consortium developing the field in the Azerbaijani area of the Caspian basin, excluded the Interconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy (ITGI) project from those being considered to carry its gas to Europe, BP said.

“Originally there were four options to carry Shah Deniz gas to Europe: TAP [Tran-Adriatic Pipeline], ITGI, SEEP [South-East Europe Pipeline] and Nabucco and now there are three. ITGI is out basically,” BP spokesman Toby Odone told New Europe.

Shah Deniz II, an important for Europe's strategy of diversifying energy supplies, is expected to add roughly 16bn cubic metres of annual production as early as 2018, 10bn cubic metres of which would be ready for export to the European Union. BP holds a 25.5% stake, as does Statoil. The rest is divided between Azeri state oil company SOCAR, Russia’s LUKoil, Iran’s NICO, Norway’s Total and Turkey’s TPAO. 

As far as the southern option is concerned, the Shah Deniz consortium picked TAP, ending discussions with ITGI. TAP will be negotiating exclusively to transit the gas from the Caspian to Italy. The next decision concerns the northern option and will be between Nabucco and SEEP, which is partially supported by BP. Odone said that a decision between Nabucco and SEEP will be made “in the next few months. I would say mid-summerish”.  MORE