Greece and other eastern European countries may be looking for alternatives after Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to scrap a pipeline bypassing Ukraine, according to Bloomberg. The alternative is a new Azeri pipeline. The eastern European region has suffered a shortage of gas in 2006 and 2009 after Russia cut off supplies to Ukraine. Today, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and alleged support of separatist movements in eastern Ukraine, relations with Europe are at a bad point. Now eastern European countries have turned to Azerbaijan and the Southern Corridor, for a series of pipelines that would carry Azeri gas to Europe. It is “a project led by BP Plc beat out the OMV AG-led Nabucco pipeline after both had vied for the same Azeri gas source. The 3,500-kilometer (2,175-mile) route from the Shah Deniz field would have initial capacity of 10 billion cubic meters a year, just one-sixth of South Stream’s capacity,” the Bloomberg report says. BP, Statoil ASA, Total SA and the State Oil Co. of Azerbaijan plan to start delivery in 2016. The fuel would flow to the Turkish-EU border and from there through Greece to Albania and Italy. The project is “realistic and can be executed in the medium term,” the Hungarian Foreign Ministry said after a meeting with representatives from Greece, Bulgaria and Romania in Athens.
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