Germany's RWE, one of the Nabucco consortium partners, has proposed a "project convergence" between the two to increase the benefits for both pipelines.
The two projects, as well as the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, are part of the planned Southern Corridor to bring Caspian region and Middle Eastern gas to southeast Europe.
Industry experts say they believe not all the projects will see the light of day because they are mostly focusing on the same sources of gas, at least in their initial stages.
Edison said that if Nabucco and ITGI were developed within the same timeframe "it could make industrial sense to consider the possibility for ITGI to use the Turkish section of Nabucco project up to the border with Greece if commercial conditions would prove it competitive."
Both projects are tentatively slated to start operations in 2015, and are both targeting the same gas--from the second phase of Azerbaijan's giant Shah Deniz offshore field, set to start production around the same time.
ITGI would have a capacity of up to 12 Bcm/year, sufficient to take the 8-10 Bcm/year gas at Shah Deniz 2 start-up, while Nabucco is bigger at 31 Bcm/year.
There are concerns that a bidding war between ITGI and Nabucco could prompt Azerbaijan to delay the start-up of Shah Deniz 2 to obtain a better price, or even to sell to another buyer altogether, probably Russia.
Nabucco cannot rely solely on Azerbaijan, and will require gas from a number of other sources to fill its capacity, including Iraq and Turkmenistan.
Iran, for now, has been excluded as a possible supplier of gas because of its political isolation.
"Shah Deniz 2 gas will be sufficient only to realize ITGI, while Nabucco would need to secure additional gas volumes to become commercially viable," the Edison spokesman said.
"We believe that, in the timeframe envisaged by the development of Shah Deniz 2, it would not be possible to realize both ITGI and Nabucco, due to lack of complementary gas sources to Azerbaijan."
RWE PROPOSAL
Edison's comments follow a presentation to a Baku conference last week by RWE Supply and Trading chief Jeremy Ellis who said the two projects could be complementary.
In slides seen by Platts, Ellis said the ITGI pipeline would benefit from Nabucco's "dedicated transit through Turkey and access to gas supplies." "It would be possible to connect ITGI to Nabucco on two points--either in Turkey (short interconnector) or in Bulgaria (through the EU-SEE Bulgaria-Greece interconnector)," he said.
"This will open Greece and Italy to the secure and stable transportation route of Nabucco together with all the benefits associated with this," Ellis said.
RWE is part of the six-company Nabucco consortium, each with a parity share. The other partners are: Austria's OMV, Hungarian MOL, Turkey's Botas, Romania's Transgaz and Bulgaria's Bulgarian Energy Holding.
Ellis said Nabucco has the advantage of already having secured an intergovernmental agreement with Turkey on transit, something the rival projects have not.
"Nabucco's dedicated transport pipeline under private ownership and control is protected by the IGA for 50 years, whereas ITGI and TAP need to secure transit through Turkish system without protection under an IGA," he said.
Although it has no IGA, the ITGI project in June this year did sign an agreement with Botas on transit through Turkey.
The ITGI export route is being developed by the Edison and its partner, Greece's DEPA, to make use of excess transit capacity in the existing gas transmission networks of Botas and DEPA.
Ellis also said Nabucco had no issue with gas transit through Turkey and that the pipeline was "lowest cost" means of transporting gas through Turkey.
China Chemical Weekly: http://news.chemnet.com/en/detail-1411716.html
