BERLIN – Russia’s invasion of Georgian territory last week, in addition to a reconfirmation of Moscow’s military strength, is complicated Europe’s efforts to diversify its oil and gas supplies away from the growing dominance of the Kremlin-controlled energy giant Gazprom.
In the post-Soviet era, and especially since 9 / 11, Central Asia has become a central focus for the western countries in search of more secure energy sources.
But this week the offensive, while British Petroleum shut down an oil pipeline and temporarily stopped pumping gas through Georgia, was wondering about the plans for a Eurasian corridor free of Russian influence.
“The Caspian region wonders what this means for the future,” said Giorgi Vashakmadze, an energy executive in Georgia. “Russia is showing that controls this corridor.”
The Russian-Georgian conflict is the latest in a series of setbacks for Europe’s planned Nabucco pipeline – the best hope of weaning itself from Gazprom, which set off alarm bells by cutting vital supply of gas to the continent in the winters of 2006 and 2008.
Hype around Nabucco has grown more measured in recent months over concerns about the volume of available gas reserves.
Elimination of constructing a gas pipeline under the Caspian Sea, the only way for Europe to gas from the region to use pipelines from both Russia or Iran, as Nabucco may have to do.
The European gas demand is expected to more than 50 per cent in 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
“There is not enough gas in the region,” says Fariborz Ghadar, an energy specialist and director of the Penn State Center for Global Business Studies. “The Nabucco pipeline now depends not only on gas from the Caucasus and from the east of the Caspian Sea, but also from Iran.”
That prospect is unacceptable for the U.S., which is still pressure on Iran over its nuclear ambitions. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs this week told Turkey, which is hosting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that it would increase its aid – seen as politically important – for Nabucco pipeline as the Iranian gas pumps.
Europeans, that the harp more about the involvement of Russia, already a Europe with 20 to 40 percent of its gas. Gazprom is expected to feed Nabucco through its Blue Stream pipeline, which would meet in Turkey, and the company already owns 50 percent of a stake in the Austrian Baumgarten gas hub, where Nabucco would eventually end.
“This goes against the whole concept of Nabucco, that it would not be either Russian or Russian-controlled gas,” says Zeyno Baran, an energy and Central Asia expert at the conservative Hudson Institute in Washington.
Nabucco is expected to be online in 2013, gas pumping stations along a 2050-mile route from Georgia to Austria, which then distribute the gas across Europe. But the six-year-old project has been mired in setbacks this year.
In January, Bulgaria and Hungary its first inked a deal to support Gazprom the South Stream pipeline, which run parallel to Nabucco. In February, the six members of European energy companies Nabucco consortium overseeing the construction reduced pioneering a year, until 2010, citing environmental study delays. In May, they announced that the pipeline’s cost had risen nearly 60 percent, mainly as a result of rising steel prices. And so far, Nabucco has received only one offer, from Bulgaria, but only for 1 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Nabucco is expected to be 35 billion cubic meters capacity.
The frankness with which Nabucco authorities are now talking about involvement of Russia as a supplier, represents a shift from politics to the pragmatic.
“Nabucco was not planned determined to be an anti-Russian project, but rather to a pro-European project,” says Christian Dolezel, a spokesman for Nabucco. “The main focus is to transport gas from alternative sources.”
Credit : csmonitor.com Pic : csmonitor.com
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