Southern Corridor Takes Centre Stage
Debate over the potential outcome of the Southern Corridor pipeline process took centre stage at the European Gas Conference being held in Vienna.
The three competing groups, Nabucco, Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), and Interconnector-Turkey-Greece-Italy (ITGI), re-iterated their position as being best suited to build the infrastructure to carry gas from the Shah Deniz II gas field in Azerbaijan to Europe.
Ambassador Roland Kobia, Head of the Delegation of the EU to Azerbaijan, stated that the choice of the pipeline route was a “commercial decision.”
Kobia said that his role was not to play favorites amongst the proposals, but he did comment that not all options were as valuable from a public policy point of view.
The Ambassador said that EU supported an “open and dedicated link” to the Caspian region an that ‘scalability’ was critical for the project, in order to allow for future sources of gas from Azeri fields, but also from Turkmenistan, the Middle East and Iraq.
Gulmira Rzayeva of the Centre for Strategic Studies under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan was quite blunt in her assessment of the various Southern Corridor gas pipeline proposals.
“Big, political pipelines are Soviet era hangovers, ” Rzayeva said.
Rzayeva said that Azerbaijan’s requirements were for a “smaller, cleaner” pipeline, pointing to the recent South Eastern Europe (SEEP) and Trans-Anatolian (TANAP) pipeline proposals.
“SEEP, TANAP are really answers to the question of what is the lowest cost way of getting 8-10 BCM of Azeri gas from Shah Deniz II to Europe, ” she continued.
TANAP, which proposes to carry at least 16bcm (of which 6bcm will be for Turkey’s domestic market and 10bcm for Europe), effectively replaces the role of Nabucco in transiting gas through Turkey, one of the five route countries through which Nabucco will traverse.
Both TAP and ITGI have welcomed cooperation with TANAP. Nabucco spokesperson Christian Dolezal said that his group was "open for co-operation with other projects," should it result in enhanced gas volumes, increase competitiveness and economies of scale leadng to lower tariffs.