Late June, the Shah Deniz consortium chose the Trans Adriatic Pipeline project as its partner of choice for exporting Caspian Sea gas from Azerbaijan to Europe, excluding competing Nabucco West.

The European Union and the United States welcomed the decision as another concrete step toward decreasing the former’s dependence on energy exports from Russia. They would probably would have reacted likewise if Nabucco had won instead.

The news was received even more positively by Italy. Premier Enrico Letta declared it “a great victory.” The reason for this enthusiasm can be easily understood by looking at any map depicting the routes of all the competing projects. They were all designed to link with Turkey’s Trans Anatolian Pipeline, but then each would have taken a different path.

Nabucco would have headed northwest through Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to connect with existing pipeline infrastructure in Austria and is aimed at servicing mainly Central European countries.

TAP instead heads west through Greece and Albania, crossing the Adriatic Sea to end up in southern Italy. It will mainly serve Southern European countries. (more…)