The chief executive of Russia's Gazprom has predicted that the planned Nabucco natural gas pipeline will take much longer to be put in service than scheduled.
It would be “very, very optimistic” to forecast a delay of two years, Alexei Miller told reporters.
At the same time, the South Stream gas pipeline project is following its schedule strictly, Miller said. “Everything is scheduled month by month,” he said.
Feasibility studies for individual sections of South Stream are ready, and the combined feasibility study will undergo its final review in August, Miller said. After that the route would be definitively set for South Stream, as would the locations of all the points at which gas would flow into or out of the pipeline, and the total volume of investments would be named.
South Stream needs estimated investments of 15.5 billion euros, a 10-billion-euro share of this being an estimated cost of the pipeline’s offshore part.
