Nabucco-West might decide on including Shah Deniz partners in project in Dec - SOCAR
BAKU. Dec 3 (Interfax) - A decision might be made on whether or not to let the Shah Deniz consortium join the Nabucco-West gas pipeline project in mid-December, President of the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic (SOCAR) Rovnag Abdullayev told journalists on Monday.
"In the first week of December, the Nabucco-West consortium will draft its final proposals [on presenting detailed information about this project to the Shah Deniz consortium], after which a meeting will be held. In the middle of December, the process of taking a decision on including the Shah Deniz consortium in the Nabucco-West project will proceed," he said.
As reported with reference to Abdullayev, the Shah Deniz consortium has signed a financial support contract for the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) project, thereby receiving access to the project's management, which makes it possible to obtain information on the details and final cost of the project. The agreement envisages the possibility of the Shah Deniz project partners acquiring up to 50% of TAP.
Right now the Shah Deniz consortium is in talks with the Nabucco-West consortium in order to more thoroughly study and clarify the cost. This will allow the consortium to make a final selection between the TAP and Nabucco-West pipeline projects, which are both aimed at exporting Azerbaijani gas to Europe, by mid-2013.
The participants in the project include BP (operator, 25.5%), Statoil (25.5%), SOCAR (10%), Lukoil (10%), NICO (10%), Total (10%) and TPAO (9%).
Stage 2 of Shah Deniz development is estimated to cost $28 billion, and annual production, which is scheduled to commence in 2017, will come to 16 billion cubic meters (bcm).
The TAP project is designed to transport natural gas from the Shah Deniz field under Stage 2 through Greece and Albania to Western Europe. The pipeline will have capacity of 10 bcm of gas a year but offer the possibility of boosting that capacity to 20 bcm, depending on supply and demand.
Nabucco-West is a truncated version of the Nabucco pipeline that envisages the laying of pipeline from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to Austria's Baumgarten.