Again: Nabucco is not viable without Russian gas. Full stop. But the fiction that it might be is alive and well.
It is a strange kind of capitalism that takes pension contributions from people and invests them in an agency of a foreign power quoted on the LSE, despite the risk that pensioners will freeze because the foreign power delivers on threats to turn off the gas taps.
[Iran] has been unable to come to terms with the requirements of long term supply contracts.
See this recent Reuters piece, also talking about Georgian transit issues and Baku's increased siding with Moscow/Gazprom: http://tinyurl.com/5axtg2
Nabucco: 'Pie in the sky' after Georgia crisis?
Steve Mufson of the Washington Post writes that one European oil company executive told him that the Nabucco project was simply "not a doable project because there is not enough gas to justify the investment," at least without Iranian gas coming into it. "The only thing that can make it viable is by using Iranian gas," the oil executive further elaborated, adding that otherwise it is a "pie in the sky." American policymakers, he said, "want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to keep Europe from using Russian gas and they want to keep Iran in a corner too".
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
