VIENNA: The consortium developing an immense new Azeri gas field, part of European efforts to reduce dependence on Russia, rejected Wednesday the proposed Nabucco pipeline in favour of a shorter, cheaper route through Greece to Italy.
According to an announcement by Austrian company OMV which backs the Nabucco project, the Shah Deniz II consortium, has opted for the rival Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).
The consortium comprises Britain's BP, Azerbaijan's SOCAR, Norway's Statoil and France's Total,
Sources in Athens also told AFP that the Shah Deniz II had informed Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras on Wednesday that this was the case.
The Shah Deniz II consortium aims to extract 16 billion cubic metres (560 billion cubic feet) of gas per year gas from under the Caspian Sea. Six billion cubic metres will go to Turkey from 2018 and the rest will go to Europe from 2019, BP says.
It aims to pump the gas through an expanded South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) across Azerbaijan and Georgia and through Turkey through a new pipeline known as Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP).
It is set to be a key part of the "Southern Gas Corridor" from the Caspian Sea to Turkish and EU markets.
Wednesday's decision to choose TAP means that from Turkey the gas will flow from Turkey through Greece and Albania and then under the Adriatic Sea to the heel of south-eastern Italy.
The Nabucco route had planned to transport it from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria a longer and more expensive 1,300-kilometre (810-mile) route, although unlike TAP, it was entirely overland.
OMV said on Wednesday that while it accepted the decision of the consortium, it believed that "the offer which was submitted ... met all the selection criteria and was highly competitive."
The owners of Nabucco, long dogged by problems, had attempted to breathe new life into the project by shortening the proposed route.
Either route though would have achieved the aim supported by Washington to reduce Europe's dependence on gas from Russia.
Moscow meanwhile backs a new pipeline under construction known as South Stream that aims to transport 63 billion cubic metres under the Black Sea to Europe.
It also completed in 2011 the first part of a new pipeline across to Baltic from Russia to northern Germany called Nord Stream.
Europe's annual demand for additional gas import may reach 80 billion cubic meters by 2020 and surpass 140 billion cubic meters by 2030, according to the South Stream website.
Russia meanwhile has moved to diversify its customer base by looking east to clients in Asia, most notably gas and oil-hungry China.
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