Nabucco officials are fairly optimistic about the chances of the EU-backed Nabucco gas pipeline project, but they can’t hide their frustration with Russian gas giant Gazprom’s agreement with Italy’s ENI in May to expand rival South Stream’s planned capacity to 63 billion cubic metres annually. “We have good cooperation with our Russian friends, but I think what they did in Sochi went a bit too far,” Bulgarian Ambassador Peter Poptchev, coordinator for the EU Nabucco Project, said on June 18 on the sidelines of the Third South East Europe Energy Dialogue here in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki. He said he could understand Russia’s reasons for increasing South Stream’s capacity, “but 63 billion cubic metres? The only reason is to kill Nabucco.”
Poptchev, who is the leader of Bulgarian delegation at the intergovernmental agreement on Nabucco, told New Europe that the state of affairs has not been in better shape for the past year or since the inception of Nabucco International. But he noted that one definitely has to be cautious about the fact that Russia proposed to double South Stream’s capacity. The ambassador said potentially it may be a threat to Nabucco if Russia does not use its own gas reserves to cover the additional volumes for South Stream and wants to get this gas from Caspian or Central Asian fields. “If this is the latter case, Nabucco as a resource base will feel some pressure,” he said. He reminded, however, that the presidents of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan have committed politically to Nabucco. For whatever it may be worth ... Other conference participants at the Thessaloniki conference pointed out unofficially that a memorandum or a verbal commitment from Central Asian leaders isn’t worth squat.
Alexey Biteryakov of Gazprom Export told New Europe that Gazprom has a huge resource base in Russia. He noted that South Stream supplies could come from Russian gas, but in addition it could be Central Asian and Caspian gas. “It is competition — yes and no — because there are many resources. First of all, we buy a lot of gas from Central Asia already. Secondly, if we are talking about Central Asia, there are many opportunities there to develop their resources,” he said. Biteryakov reminded that many fields in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are closer to Russia’s existing infrastructure.
Russia has also tried to tie up all the gas supplies from Azerbaijan. “Russia has obviously a very elaborate and far-reaching strategy, but the EU should have its own and pursue it,” Poptchev said, laughing. “It cannot depend on Russian strategy. I would say that to the extent that Russia aims naturally to diversify demand and particular the countries in Southeast Europe have all reasons and interests to diversify supply so the fact that they want to build Nabucco is only natural,” he added.
Sofia has declared its intention to join both South Stream and Nabucco. “Bulgaria honestly believes in the viability of the two projects,” he said, adding that even in the most guarded forecasts Europe will need 100-150 billion cubic metres of gas by 2020. Given that the EU’s own gas production will likely decline by 30-40 percent, all three projects: Nord Stream, South Stream and Nabucco still have a place. This has to be seen against another backdrop which is the rehabilitation and modernisation of Ukrainian pipelines.
Brussels and Kiev sparked anger in Russia earlier this year after reaching a deal to modernise the network without Russian participation. “In the case of Russia, very often company and government are being unified in order to make the Russian case stronger. Some times this wins, sometimes it doesn’t, with all due regard,” Poptchev said.
But he acknowledged that the Russians were  fairly constructive at the Sofia energy summit in April. “What they are interested in is to have their projects, which they have started discussing with EU Member States ... one day become European projects. They have now succeeded in the past few months with Nord Stream. They would like to see the same with South Stream,” Poptchev said, adding that what is really Russia’s interest is acquiring better conditions for buying energy assets on the territory of EU Member States.
 
 KGeropoulos@NEurope.eu