EC President to visit Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan to discuss Nabucco

The President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, and the
European Commissioner for Energy, Gunther Oettinger, will visit
Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan next week to discuss the Nabucco gas
pipeline project, Barroso said on Wednesday, RIA Novosti reports.

The South Corridor includes Nabucco (Azerbaijan-Turkey-Austria), TGI
(Turkey-Greece-Italy) and TAP (Trans Adriatic Pipeline). The Nabucco
consortium expects gas supplies from Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Iraq
to fill the pipeline system.

Nabucco involves transportation of Caspian gas to European countries,
by-passing Russia, through Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria,
Hungary, Romania and Austria. The pipeline will be 3,300km long and
will be an extension of the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline, capable of
transporting 20-30 billion cubic meters of gas annually. The project
is set to cost 7.9 billion euros. The EU considers the project to be
an opportunity to diversify gas supplies.

Reinhard Mitschek, managing director of Nabucco Gas Pipeline
International GmbH., established in October, said that the consortium
will start construction in 2012 and launch the facility in 2015.

The shareholders of the consortium are RWE (Germany), OMV (Austria),
MOL (Hungary), Transgaz (Romania), BEH (Bulgaria) and Botas (Turkey).
RWE and OMV plan to provide 10 billion cubic meters of gas supplies
from Azerbaijan, in order to have the minimum capacity necessary for
the pipeline to work.