THE US government has publicly confirmed its support for the Nabucco pipeline project that is being planned to bring gas from the Caspian Basin to central Europe. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza said Nabucco was as important to the United States, to help European allies diversify sources of supply and reduce dependency on Russia, as the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (TBC) oil pipeline had been in the 1990s. “The Nabucco pipeline will be built, I am convinced, because it makes commercial sense,” he told reporters after recent talks with EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs. “We are trying to build on the success of the last decade and expand the infrastructure put in place with the same commitment, the same intensity,” he said.
Mr Bryza said the planned 3,300-km pipeline across Turkey to central Europe was a much more cost-efficient way of transporting gas from Azerbaijan to Europe than the rival South Stream pipeline project being suggested by Gazprom. "Nabucco makes eminently more commercial sense than any of the other projects," he said, comparing the US' diplomatic effort to support the project with the intense campaign Washington waged in the late 1990s to promote the TBC pipeline.
Construction of Nabucco is due to start in 2010 at an estimated cost of $6 billion, and Mr Bryza pointed out that the project could transport gas from northern and western Iraq as well as Azerbaijan and offshore Caspian fields. Mr Bryza said he believed Nabucco would be built even if South Stream went ahead, because there was sufficient projected gas demand in Europe as countries switched from coal-fired power stations to gas-fired ones to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
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