Nabucco officials express optimism

SOFIA, Bulgaria, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- Project backers scheduled a 2011 launch date for the construction of the Nabucco pipeline to transport Iraqi, Turkmen and Azeri natural gas, officials said.

Christian Dolezal, the spokesman for the Nabucco gas pipeline consortium, told an audience at an energy forum in Sofia that construction was scheduled for the end of 2011. Gas transits, he said, should begin in 2013.

Dolezal stressed that Nabucco would carry gas from the Kurdish north of Iraq, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, the official Sofia News Agency reports.

Europe was forced into a race to diversify its energy transit sector when Russian energy giant Gazprom cut gas supplies briefly to Ukraine following a 2009 dispute over debt. Europe gets roughly 20 percent of its gas from Russia, though 80 percent of that travels through Soviet-era pipelines in Ukraine.

Nabucco would move natural gas through Turkey along a southern European route that avoids politically sensitive territory in Ukraine.

Despite political support for the project, a lack of firm commitments from supplier nations and rival projects from Moscow cast a shadow over Nabucco. Austrian energy giant and Nabucco partner OMV said recently the project might not develop without adequate interest.

Nevertheless, Dolezal said a projected increase in the regional demand for natural gas made Nabucco a viable project.