The feasibility and political contribution of nabucco project (Natural gas transportation from Turkey to Europe) to Turkey

The Nabucco Project is a ?natural gas transporting project?, which is foreseen to connect the Middle East and Caspian natural gas reserves to the European Market. The beginning country of the project is Turkey; thus, it is aimed to transport the obtained natural gas through this Project starting from Turkey, along Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary and finally to Austria; firstly in order to cover the gas demand of the countries mentioned and then in the following years, it is aimed to make use of the feature of Austria being an important gas hub in Europe for the transportation of natural gas to the western European countries according to the improvements on demand. It is planned that the project with a length of approximately 3.300 km reaches the maximum capacity of 31 billion m3/year and starts operating in 2012 with the initial capacity. Considering the present conditions, it is planned to transport the gas of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Iran and other Trans-Caspian resources. In a long period, it is also planned to transport the gas from the resources of Egypt and other surrounding countries along the line in Iraq and Syria. The project has been initiated after the negotiations between BOTAŞ and firms called BULGARGAZ (Bulgaria), TRANSGAZ (Romania) and OMV (Austria) and the formation of a working group in February, 2002. With the involvement of MOL (Hungary), all five countries have founded a limited company called ?Nabucco Gas Pipeline International Ltd?. The number of countries (shareholders) of the company rose to six with the involvement of the German company called RWE. Within the project, which has been initiated to create ?resource varieties?, the studies on the route of the pipeline to transport the gas, and the supplying countries are still being carried out.Keywords: Nabucco, Natural gas, Pipeline, Project, Resource