Nabucco gas pipeline project at a glance

The countries of the Caspian region and the Middle East, such as Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan or Iraq, have the world’s largest natural gas deposits. Development of the Nabucco gas pipeline is intended to open up new markets in Europe and Turkey for the countries in these regions, while making a significant contribution toward ensuring security of supply: Europe will need more gas for electricity production in the coming years and decades, but will be increasingly less able to meet its requirements from its own production.

Illustration 1: Southern Corridor gas pipeline projects (Last update: August 2011) Note: In mid-February 2012, SD2 announced that that the Greek-Italian ITGI project for gas exports to Europe will no longer be pursued. 

The Nabucco pipeline will stretch over a length of approximately 3,900 km from Turkey, through Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, to Baumgarten near Vienna in Austria. The owner and operator of the pipeline is Nabucco Gas Pipeline International GmbH, domiciled in Vienna. The shareholders in this company, with holdings of about 16.67% each, are OMV Gas & Power GmbH (Austria), MOL Hungarian Oil & Gas plc (Hungary), SNTGN Transgaz SA (Romania), Bulgarian Energy Holding EAD (Bulgaria), BOTAS (Turkey) and RWE. The capacity of the pipeline will be 31 billion cubic metres p.a. Total investments amount to approximately €8 billion and are currently under investigation.

Technical details:

The pipeline with a length of approximately 3,900 km will start at the Georgian/Turkish and Iraqi/Turkish borders and lead to Baumgarten in Austria. It will pass through the following partner countries:

Last update: August 2011