ERBIL, Iraq, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- Iraq may send some of its natural gas to plants in Turkey for processing if the planned Nabucco pipeline doesn't materialize, a Kurdish official said.
Azerbaijan is weighing proposals for resources from its Shah Deniz 2 gas field from pipeline consortiums involved in the so-called Southern Corridor of transit networks.
The Nabucco pipeline, the most ambitious of the Southern Corridor projects, would carry an estimated 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas per year.
Natural gas from Iraq was considered as a potential source of Nabucco, as it would travel through nearby territory in Turkey. Ashti Hawrami, the oil minister for the Kurdish government in Iraq, said he was growing impatient with Nabucco developments.
"We are in a hurry," he was quoted by the Emirati newspaper The National as saying. "We have the gas, we need to monetize the value of this gas, and we cannot wait for investors to come up with a plan."
Critics of Nabucco say the project is overly ambitious and lacks formal gas agreements to go forward.
Most of the natural gas from Kurdish territory in Iraq is flared off. Hawrami said he would consider processing his gas into liquefied natural gas at facilities in Turkey without Nabucco.
"If a pipeline capability does not materialize in time … then we will go for the LNG plant in Ceyhan," he said.
