Nabucco Executive Sees No Reason to Doubt Shareholders' Commitment

By Alessandro Torello

BRUSSELS--The choice of the Nabucco West pipeline project as a potential route to bring Caspian gas to Europe has renewed shareholders' confidence in the plan, its managing director said Friday.

"It is the case that one or the other shareholder has said: we want to take a decision now because we are impatient and we don't want to further finance a project where there are no decisions," Reinhard Mitschek said in a conference call. "But this picture changed considerably in the recent days: Shah Deniz took a decision in favor or Nabucco West."

Shah Deniz is the BP PLC (BP)-led consortium that is developing a natural-gas field offshore Azerbaijan. It said Thursday that it was selecting the Nabucco West pipeline concept as one of the two final options to be considered when the consortium decides on a route to pipe Caspian gas to Europe next year.

The decision follows months of remarks by some Nabucco shareholders--namely German utility RWE AG (RWE.XE) and Hungary's MOL Nyrt. (MOL.BU)--suggesting that they were cooling off to the pipeline project.

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