Turkey to sign an agreement on Nabucco with shareholders on June 6

“Turkey will sign an agreement on the Nabucco project on June 6,” said Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Taner Yildiz, quoted by RIA Novosti. The document will be signed by all the companies participating in the project – Bulgaria’s Bulgargaz, Turkey’s Botas, Austria’s OMV, Romania’s Transgaz, Hungary’s MOL and Germany’s RWE.

Yildiz added that the participants in the project were trying to get a concrete answer from Azerbaijan regarding the gas supplies to Nabucco. “If Azerbaijan answers negatively, we will contact Turkmenistan, Iraq and Iran for gas supplies. The project is of great importance for Turkey and Europe,” commented the Turkish Energy Minister.

According to projects, Nabucco is expected to transport some 31 billion cu m of natural gas from the Caspian region to the EU, bypassing Russia.

The construction of the pipeline had to begin in 2012 and the first deliveries to be effected in 2015 but, a month ago, the Nabucco consortium announced that the implementation of the project will be extended by a year in accordance with the schedule for gas deliveries.

Meanwhile, Bulgaria has requested the EU to find a solution to the issue of compulsory declaration of free capacity along the transit pipelines. This is a requirement under the third European energy liberalisation package but its application is impossible because of the confidentiality clauses in the bilateral contracts with Russia’s Gazprom. The issue was discussed during the meeting between Bulgaria’s Energy Minister Traicho Traikov and EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger. “The effective contract with Gazprom forbids Bulgaria to declare the quantity of spare capacity since it considers this data ‘confidential trade information’. Thus, our country is now between the hammer and the anvil. On the one hand, the EC threatens to sue Bulgaria if we do not declare the spare capacity. On the other hand, Gazprom threatens to sue us if we do so,” explained Minister Traikov. According to experts, the gas transiting network of Bulgartransgaz is currently operating at just 30% of its capacity.

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