Trans-Caspian gas pipeline vital to Nabucco

Contentious trans-Caspian gas pipeline will be built; Shah Deniz gas will be transported through Nabucco; managing director Reinhard Mitschek talks to Kwok W Wan

The Nabucco pipeline depends on gas supplies from Turkmenistan through a Trans-Caspian pipeline, the project’s managing director told Petroleum Economist. The 31 billion cubic metre a year (cm/y) EU-backed Nabucco project – which aims to bring central Asian gas to Austria’s Baumgarten hub and help reduce EU reliance on Russian imports – is bidding for the first 10 billion cm/y from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz phase two project. But it also needs gas from Turkmenistan and Iraq to fill the pipeline’s capacity. Nabucco expects to secure 10 billion to 15 billion cm each from Turkmenistan and Iraq, but would require a subsea link, beneath the Caspian, to receive Turkmenistani gas, Reinhard Mitschek s