OMV Promotes Nabucco Project Abroad

OMV´s CEO Gerhard Roiss currently promotes the Nabucco project in the Caspian region. Roiss therefore will have several meetings with the governments of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. The Austrian President Heinz Fischer will attend Roiss.

Roiss and Fischer already met the Turkish Minister of Energy, Taner Yildiz. On Wednesday, the both Austrians will sign a memorandum with the oil company Socar in Azerbaijan together with the local President Ilham Aliyev. After that, a visit in Turkmenistan is planned.

According to Roiss, the first gas deliveries are planned in 2018. “When the final decision will be announced, depends on the timing of gas deliveries”, Roiss explains. The CEO of OMV expects the final decision to be made in 2013 or 2014. “There will be no delay. I never told another date.”, Roiss argued.

The difficulties are due to the interminable negotiations in order to receive gas licenses. Besides this, Nabucco also needs rights of ways of every single government. Roiss stated that there are many single political decisions for the projects. “We need Brussels, we need Austria and we need political guarantees for the financing.”, Roiss says.

Roiss does not see a danger coming from the rival projects TAP (Trans Adriatic Pipeline) and ITGI (Interconnector Turkey Greece-Italy), which also asked the local governments for exploration licenses: “The European Commission clarified that there is only one project which meets the criterion to deliver 30bn cubic meters. And this is Nabucco.”