Smaller Nabucco pipeline has a fighting chance

A new contender has shaken up the battle to build gas pipelines from central Asia to Europe, but has failed to land the killer blow that would knock out the much-battered Nabucco project

A decade since the EU-backed Nabucco megaproject, which would ship Central Asian and Middle Eastern gas through Turkey to Austria, was first proposed, there have been lingering doubts over how it would fill its 31 billion cubic metre a year (cm/y) capacity. Only 10 billion cm/y of supply from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz II is on the table, expected to start in 2017, with other suppliers, such as Turkmenistan and Iraq, still far from being able to deliver. Several smaller Southern Corridor pipeline projects have since entered the fray, proposing cheaper and more realistic ways for Europe to lessen its dependence on Russian gas and avoid a repeat of transit problems through Ukraine. These inclu