Nabucco gets first supply order

The planned Nabucco pipeline, which will take Central Asian natural gas to Europe, has received its first supply order, EU representatives said this week.

Bulgaria has agreed to purchase over one billion cubic meters of gas from Azerbaijan per year.

Work still has not started on the pipeline, which is scheduled to go online in 2013 and has been designed to transport a maximum of 31 billion cubic meters per year by around 2020, although initial deliveries are expected to be much less.

The International Herald Tribune quoted an anonymous European Commission official describing the Bulgaria deal as “good news.”

“Until now, Nabucco had not been going so well,” he added, according to the newspaper.

Speculation has been rife over the progress of Nabucco this year, after Russia’s South Stream project, which plans to bring Russian gas to Europe, began attracting states already involved with Nabucco.

Nabucco, which is backed by the US and EU, is aimed at decreasing European dependence on Russian pipelines.

Hungary and Bulgaria signed up to South Stream earlier this year and Austria’s oil and gas company OMV AG looks set to sign a deal to operate the Austrian section of the South Stream pipeline soon.

However, OMV officials stressed that the company’s involvement in South Stream would not affect Nabucco.

“It would be a win-win situation for OMV and Austria to receive gas from two pipelines. We don’t see Nabucco and South Stream as competitors, but as complementary projects,” Dow Jones Newswires quoted an OMV spokesman as saying on June 10.