OpEdNews.com: The Myth of Nabucco: Greed, Delusion and $11.4 Billion

PanARMENIAN.Net - Nabucco is a complex skein of greed, European foreign policy agendas and the ongoing belief, a delusional legacy of the Bush administration, that somehow Caspian energy "belongs" to the West, and furthermore, that both Russia and Iran will complacently stand back while Western capitalism pulls off another energy initiative dwarfing BTC, OpEdNews.com says in an article.



Further complicating the picture are the differing proposed transit and pricing policies of the countries that Nabucco will pass through. The biggest geographical hurdle impacting the bottom line is the fact that, if as some Nabucco boosters aver, Turkmenistan can be persuaded to contribute natural gas, the seabed of the Caspian has yet to definitively be delineated amongst the sea's five riparian states, the author of the publication finds.



According to him, the European interest in Nabucco is underpinned by the unpleasant realization that since 1991 it has become more and more dependent upon Russia for natural gas imports, with Russia's state monopoly Gazprom now supplying 40% of Europe's imports.



As the author further notes, there is one potential supplier that could step into the supply void, but for Washington, it is a country too far: Iran.



Moscow still largely relies on its Eastern European Soviet-era pipeline network, the annual winter spats between Moscow and Kiev over payment rates and transit have deeply traumatized Brussels to conduct a frantic search for alternatives in a desperate attempt to achieve energy security. Nabucco is designed to carry Caspian and Central Asian natural gas via Turkey and the Balkan states to Austria while bypassing both Russia and Ukraine, says the article.



Nabucco agreement was signed in mid-July 2009 by Turkey, Austria and Romania. The estimated cost of the project is $ 7.9 billion. The pipeline will serve for transporting natural gas to European countries via Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Austria. Nabucco will form the continuation of Baku-Tbilisi-Erzrum pipeline, annually transporting 31 billion cubic meters of gas. Construction activities are due in 2010. The pipeline is to be launched in 2014.