Nabucco West Makes its Official Entry in Southern Gas Corridor Contest

The Nabucco pipline project today submitted a revised proposal to the Shah Deniz II Consortium for the construction of the “Nabucco West” pipeline.

The modified concept of the original "base case" for the Nabucco project, foresees the construction of a 1,300 km pipeline running from the Bulgarian-Turkish border to the Central European Gas Hub in Baumgarten, Austria.

The shorter “West” pipeline option reduced the length and cost of the originally submitted design by starting at Turkey's western border, leaving gas transport through Turkey to existing infrastructure or a new pipeline such as TANAP.

The Nabucco corsortium said that Nabucco West is designed to transport gas initially from Azerbaijan, but is fully scalable to meet future gas transport demand from the Caspian Region and Middle-East to the European markets.

The consortium stated that Nabucco West will benefit from the existing legal framework, namely the Intergovernmental Agreement, Project Support Agreements and third party access exemptions as the Nabucco base case and will follow exactly the same route on European Union territory.

“We are convinced that we have submitted a competitive and comprehensive proposal to the Shah Deniz II Consortium, and that this proposal represents a win-win situation for our shareholders and for suppliers alike”, said Reinhard Mitschek, Managing Director of Nabucco Gas Pipeline International.

The Nabucco consortium consists of Austria's OMV, Germany's RWE, Hungary's MOL, Turkey's Botas, BEH of Bulgaria and Romania's Transgaz.

Both MOL and RWE have indicated that they are re-considering their participation in the project, with MOL saying that it is prepared to sell it present shareholdings.