Nabucco Investment Decisions May Be Delayed Until 2011

A final decision by partners in the Nabucco project on building the gas pipeline could be delayed until the beginning of 2011, representatives of Nabucco partner OMV (Austria) said.
"As before, we plan to make a decision on the investment by the end of the year, but for reasons beyond our control, this could happen in the first quarter of 2011", OMV Head Wolfgang Ruttenstorfer said according to the Wall Street Journal. "We depend on both the supplier country and the consumer states", he added.
If the decision is made, the 7.9 billion euro pipeline, which has a throughput capacity of up to 32 billion cubic meters of gas per year, could lower Europe's dependence on Russian gas, the Centre for Energy Expertise reports.
The 'open season' process, which envisions selling throughput capacity is to be started in the fourth quarter of 2010 and will take three months. During this produce, shareholders in the project will get up to 15 billion cubic meters of gas per year (50 percent of the pipeline's total capacity), while the other 50 percent will be offered to third parties on equal and transparent terms. Under the open season process, all market players will be able to ink lng-term contracts.
The current shareholders in Nabucco are: OMV (Austria), MOL (Hungary), Bulgargaz (Bulgaria), Transgaz (Romania), Botas (Turkey) and RWE (Germany). Each of them owns a 16.67 percent stake in the project.
The main, possible suppliers of gas in the first phase include Azerbaijan and Iraq.