A freezing Nabucco?

The EU-supported Nabucco natural gas pipeline project aimed at connecting the Caspian fields with Europe is jeopardized by insufficient reserves, an aggressive policy from Russia and the failure of Turkey to intervene in due time, according to energy experts quoted by Turkish Daily News, cited by Romanian monitoring agency Rador.

Worse, recent natural gas accords between Russia and Turkmenistan come for many as a signal that Turkey’s dream of connecting East and West through pipelines is on course of collision with reality, according to the paper.

The Nabucco project involves a pipeline due to cross Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to Austria. It was approved by five countries in June 2006. But Nabucco has been falling under increased pressure from several energy deals concluded by Russia.

The latest of these occurred on December 20 as Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an accord with Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to build a large pipeline along the Caspian Sea, due to be finalized before 2010, a move which may deplete the potential sources considered for Nabucco.

Turkish Daily News quotes energy expert Hasan Selim Ozertem according to whom Turkmenistan is pumping some 60 billion cubic meters of its annual natural gas production to Russia and another 30 billion cubic meters to China and despite its vast reserves it does not have the proper production capacity to supply the Nabucco pipeline.

Ozertem believes Turkey should convince the European Union to invest in Turkmenistan, as Central Asian countries eager to fill their treasuries would rather favor palpable projects provided by Russia and not the promises of EU and Turkey.