Doris Leblond
OGJ Correspondent
PARIS, June 10 -- Although the investment required to build the 3,300-km, 31 billion cu m Nabucco natural gas pipeline has jumped from €5 billion estimated in 2005 to €57.9 billion today, its "competitiveness is not affected, since high demand for energy will increase the profitability of energy projects," says Reinhard Mitschek, managing director of Nabucco Gaspipeline International.
The altered forecast is based on a recent capital expense update undertaken by the Nabucco consortium that incorporates the high price of crude oil and the rising demand for steel. Nabucco will require 2 million tons of steel, 200,000 pipes, and more than 30 compressor units.
In mid-June Nabucco will sound out the market in preparation for the open season process. So far, the consortium says, the market has shown great interest in the proposed available capacities.
Although there is still some doubt as to whether there will be enough gas available from the Caspian region to fill the Nabucco gasline, Brendan Devlin, Assistant EU coordinator for the Caspian-Middle East-EU gas route, insisted at Energy Exchange Ltd.'s CIS Oil & Gas Summit held in Paris in late May that all the current gasline projects announced to supply Europe from the East would be needed.
Some of the current gas lines, he said, "do not add a lot of gas for the EU but are diversions of already signed contracts." Nonetheless, with eastern EU countries still completely dependent on Russian gas and with no interconnections between them, route diversification is central to the EU supply strategy. "There is the need to coordinate the southern route in its entirety, not only Nabucco," he said.
He added that it made sense to develop relations with the Middle East, Egypt, and Iran for the EU gas import needs that would increase by 70 billion cu m to 200 billion cu m by 2020 and 100 billion cu m to 230 billion cu m by 2030. "We have about 10-15 scenarios being prepared, and we would want Turkey to be central to a number of them," he said.
The Nabucco gasline would extend from Turkey to Austria via Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary. The consortium includes Austria's OMV Gas International, Hungary's MOL, Bulgaria's Bulgargaz, Romania's Transgaz, Turkey's Bohas, and Germany's RWE Gas Midstream.
