Any determination of the legal status of the Caspian Sea will affect the participants in the construction of the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline, CEO of the National Company KazMunayGaz, Bolat Akchulakov said. The statement was in response to a question of Alexey Vlasov, Editor-in-Chief of Vestnik Kavkaza, at the plenary session “The Economy of Kazakhstan – 20 years of achievements, a look into the future” of the Sixth Forum of European and Asian Media (FEAM0-2011) in Astana.
The Trans-Caspian pipeline will connect Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. It is one of the weak sides of the Nabucco project. The issue became more topical after the opening of official talks of the EU with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan for construction of the pipeline. Moscow and Tehran say that realization of such projects requires the approval of all 5 Caspian states.
Nabucco will transport gas to the European market, bypassing Russia. It will run through Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Austria. It will be 3,300 km long and will be part of the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline. It will deliver 30 billion cubic meters of gas annually. The project is set to cost about 7.9 billion euros.
