Nabucco Signing Today
The a?ternative pipeline, that doesn’t have gas, or customers, will take a step forward today.
Officials from Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria will gather in the Turkish capital Ankara to back the Nabucco project, which has been in planning since at least 2004.
The project is designed to be an alternative to Russia’s increasingly tight stranglehold on European gas supply. As such it makes a lot of sense from a point of view of energy security.
With growing demand for natural gas across Europe, finding customers should not be too difficult either. However, multilateral deals on projects like this are extremely difficult.
Turkey had held off signing a transit accord as it sought approval to take 15 percent of the gas passing through the pipe at discounted prices for its own use.
If the project doesn’t happen, that will be 15% of zero. However politicians love this kind of beggar my neighbour horse trading. No doubt other countries also had their own demands, and other geopolitical issues will always threaten. It has to be hoped that the pipeline will eventually get built, or the future of natural gas in Europe will be much more doubtful.
