Iran Declares Nabucco Dead

The director of Iran’s national gas export company labeled the Nabucco gas pipeline as a dead project. He expressed his company’s readiness to facilitate Turkmen gas export to Europe passing through its territory, highlighted that this is the most economically viable project. The Nabucco project is currently only on paper. Initially it was planned to start in 2009, but until recently no real steps were taken in this direction. On September 2011 a special document had been elaborated to conduct trilateral negotiations between the EU, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan over the Nabucco issue. Russia meanwhile tries to undermine the Nabucco project in all possible ways. Its major position is that the decision to transport gas in the Caspian Sea bed is the responsibility of all five countries on the Caspian littoral.