March 27 (SeeNews) - The consortium of six partners behind a key European Union-backed project designed to carry Caspian gas to Europe hopes to have financing for the construction of the 7.9 billion euro ($10.6 billion) gas pipeline ready by early 2010, the consortium's managing director Reinhard Mitschek said on Friday.
"At the end of 2009 - beginning 2010 we hope to finalise the loan agreements," Mitschek told SeeNews in an interview.
The shareholders in the Nabucco Gas Pipeline International consortium are Austria's OMV, Germany's RWE, Hungary's MOL, Turkey's Botas, Bulgaria's Bulgargaz and Romania's Transgaz. They plan to build the 3,300-kilometre pipeline that would carry 31 billion cubic metres of Caspian natural gas a year with the aim to diversify European gas supplies and decrease Europe's dependence on Russian deliveries.
The consortium partners will share about 30% of the project's cost and the rest will be raised from financial institutions.
"A bigger part [will be secured] by institutional financiers like the European Investment Bank, the EBRD, IFC and also a big part [will come] from credit export agencies from European countries like Austria, Germany, Italy, France but also from the U.S. Exim Bank also and JBIC from Japan," Mitschek said.
Talks with the potential project sponsors were launched last autumn. "We got promising results - even in the financial crisis or, maybe if I may say, even more, because financial institutes now want to weigh risk and the transportation, the infrastructure project where there is a 25-year transportation contract provides certain security of a stable cash flow," Mitschek said.
"Therefore, we are relatively at the good side with the financing force. This financal aid from the commission will also be a very positive signal to financial institutions to follow this example."
Mitschek further said that the consortium will receive material supply and pipe supply from various countries like Japan, the U.S. and Europe. "We need two million tonnes of steel and the export credit agencies are eager to support national economies and national industries and there are ready to give huge guarantees and finance volumes for supply of material to our project."
The consortium will make a final investment decision on the project in 2010 and will launch construction the following year. The first gas deliveries are expected in 2014.
The Nabucco pipeline will start at the Georgian/Turkish and/or Iranian/Turkish border and will link the Caspian region, the Middle East and Egypt via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary with Austria and further west with Central and Western Europe.
Nabucco has re-emerged as a project of strategic significance for Central and Eastern Europe after a price dispute between Moscow and Kiev left much of the region without Russian gas for two weeks earlier this year.
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