War Casts Doubts On Pipeline

[Dover]

Source: The St. Petersburg Times


MOSCOW — Any plans to use Georgia as a bridge for more energy supplies to Europe are likely set to gather dust now that the tiny country’s fierce armed conflict with Russia has exposed the insecurity of the route, analysts said.

Georgia has been a key conduit of oil and gas from Central Asia to the West that bypasses Russia, and Europe has been hoping to build another pipeline to bring more gas from the area.

That pipeline project, called Nabucco, has long been on the drawing board, but potential investors had trouble contracting enough gas for it from Azerbaijan or Turkmenistan.

Shipping the gas from Turkmenistan would require building a separate pipeline across the Caspian Sea bed, which has yet to be divided by the sea’s five littoral states, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran.

Now, Georgia’s vulnerability may have dealt a lethal blow to Nabucco and plans for a trans-Caspian pipeline.

“A trans-Caspian gas pipeline can be considered a forever buried chimera,” said Pavel Baev, an energy expert at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo. “It became clear for all the participants of these energy games that nothing will go through the Caspian Sea.”..cont'd



Read more: http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=26851

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Recommend reading the whole article.



Nabucco Pipeline Highly Unlikely - Metropol
The agreement between Gazprom (GAZP.RS) and Turkmenistan to construct the Pri-Caspian gas pipeline, with a 30 billion cubic meter throughput a year, makes realization of the EU-backed Nabucco pipeline unlikely, says Metropol. 'The construction of this pipeline means that all Turkmen gas exported to EU will pass through Gazprom's income statement. The agreement implies that realization of the Nabucco pipeline seems highly unlikely,' says Alexei Kokin...cont'd

http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?z1530027270&z=950240583

[bemildred]

1. It's not impossible, but you have to be willing to deal.

A trans-Caspian pipeline will work fine if you are not trying to use it to screw other people and grab all the profits for yourself. I am always amazed a pseudo-Capitalists that do not understand that people will not cooperate without incentives, and will get downright hostile when you try to screw them for your own benefit.