Turkey still supporting Nabucco pipeline, says minister

Jan 20, 2012, 16:57 GMT

Istanbul - Turkey still supports the EU-backed Nabucco pipeline project to carry Caspian Sea gas to Europe, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz announced Friday, Turkey's state news agency Anatolian reported.

Anatolian quoted Yildiz as stating that, as a member of the six-country consortium developing the Nabucco pipeline project, Turkey is committed to helping deliver gas from Azerbaijan to Europe.

'We are continuing our efforts to realize the project to help secure Europe's energy supply security,' he was reported as stating.

The planned Nabucco pipeline has been designed to carry 31 billion cubic metres of gas a year from the Caspian and Middle East, nearly 4,000 miles from eastern Turkey to Europe's main gas hub at Baumgarten in Austria.

Initially carrying gas from Azerbaijan, the line is slated to be operational by 2017, and is supported by the European Union as a vital alternative source of gas to Russia, which already supplies around 50 per cent of gas imported into the union.

Although a long-time member of the Nabucco consortium, Turkey's support for the project has been in question since the announcement in November of the joint-Turkish Azeri Trans Anatolian Pipeline project (TANAP), which aims to carry the same Azeri gas Nabucco is meant to carry.

Planned to use some of Turkey's existing gas transmission lines to carry Azeri gas as far as Turkey's border with Bulgaria, TANAP is expected to be considerably cheaper to build than Nabucco, whose estimated costs have ballooned to between 12 billion and 15 billion euros (15.5 billion to 19.4 billion dollars).

Anatolian quoted Yildiz as stating that Turkey and Azerbaijan had proposed TANAP as a possible alternative for carrying gas to Europe.

'We still think that the need for Nabucco will not decrease over the long term,' he was quoted as saying.

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