June 25, a Key Date for Nabucco?
15/5/2009Robert M. Cutler on Asia Times reports that
The European Union (EU) and Turkey have resolved two major differences that were preventing agreement on the terms for the Nabucco natural gas pipeline, and the Turkish President Abdullah Gul is reported to have promised that a signing ceremony will take place on June 25 in Ankara.
[…] The Nabucco project would in the first instance take gas from the further development of Azerbaijan’s offshore Shah-Deniz project, which has so far been delayed even though it is piping some gas through the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzerum line (BTE, also called the South Caucasus Pipeline, or SCP). In Prague for the first time, EU officials spoke to the press about the possibility of an undersea pipeline from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan […]
Slowly, the prospects for the ambitious projects are improving. Countless analysts in the last couple of years had claimed that Nabucco was irrealistic and doomed to fail. But they failed to notice that Russia’s alternative project (South Stream) had also troubles, and that slowly, the Turkmen political context was changing. The situation remains a complex one, and nothing is certain. However, the next two months may see a breakthrough. Stay tuned.
