The €8 billion project, delayed for several years, is expected to be financed by the main international financial institutions. The signing ceremony is one of the final steps before proceedings to attract the needed funds and the start of construction works. According to the release issued by the consortium established for the project, Nabucco Gas Pipeline International, its shareholders – OMV (Austria), MOL (Hungary), Transgaz (Romania), Bulgarian Energy Holding (Bulgaria), Botas (Turkey), and RWE (Germany) will use half of the pipeline’s capacity, while the remainder will be used by other transporter.
Nabucco is intended to cut Europe’s dependence on Russian gas, helping to avoid a repeat of the cutoffs that reduced supplies to the region twice in the last three years, according to Bloomberg newswire. The link, due to send as much as 31 billion cubic meters of Caspian-region fuel a year via Turkey to Austria starting in 2014, still faces competition for gas. A further “project support” agreement will be signed within six months, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan said. About 2,000 kilometers of the pipeline will be laid in Turkey, 400 kilometers in Bulgaria, 460 kilometers in Romania, 390 kilometers in Hungary, and 46 kilometers in Austria. Aside from Nabucco, proposed pipelines in the region include South Stream and Blue Stream, both Gazprom and Eni SpA joint projects, as well White Stream, the Trans Adriatic Pipeline and the Interconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy, or ITGI.
Romania will have to gain on at least two segments from the project, according to energy market analysts. The first advantage is more independence from the Russian gas, while the second is related to revenues of gas transportation company Transgaz, owned by the Romanian state. “From the economic point of view, the main advantage are the transit fees. Furthermore, we could consider the acquisition of cheaper gas, if, of course, there are companies interested to reserve gas through Nabucco in Romania,” according to a manager within Deloitte consulting company, Valeriu Binig. Energy expert Jean Constantinescu added that the project still has some important steps to make, related to financing. Meanwhile, Binig does not rule out that private investors become interested in the project, after the inter-governmental agreement was signed.
While agreeing on the benefits, the two experts disagree on Romanian authorities’ attitude towards the project. “We are not at any end f the project, so we are not to impose conditions, as Turkey can. We were disciplined, we did what we were told, we could have done nothing so the Nabucco project is more successful,” Binig said. On the other hand, Constantinescu said that Romanian authorities lack a vision regarding its energetic future. “Our behavior was hesitating. I am talking about all the governments since 2002, when the project was launched. The explanation is simple: the lack of an energetic strategy,” he stressed.