BP Picks E.ON-Led Group to Bring Azeri Gas to Europe

iNVEZZ.com, Thursday, June 27th: BP Plc (LON:BP, NYSE:BP) has chosen a consortium led by Germany’s E.ON to build a $15 billion (£9.8 billion) pipeline to bring natural gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz gas field to Europe. The rival Nabucco pipeline consortium, a centrepiece of the European Union’s efforts to reduce its reliance of Russian gas supplies, had been rejected, one of the partners in Nabucco, Austrian oil and gas company OMV, said yesterday.

BP’s share price shed less than one percent in morning trading in London today, whereas OMV’s share price was marginally down in Vienna. E.ON’s share price rose on the Deutsche Boerse Xetra.
**Start Trading in less than 60 seconds >>** 
Stocks designed to earn you profit without having to buy shares.

**BP and Partners Prefer Trans-Adriatic Pipeline**
The Shah Deniz II consortium, led by BP and the Azeri state energy company Socar, has chosen the Trans-Adriatic pipeline (TAP) over Nabucco to bring gas from Azerbaijan to Europe. BP and its partners, including Norway’s Statoil, are spending $25 billion (£16.4 billion) to develop the Shah Deniz gas field, intended to deliver six billion cubic metres of gas a day to Turkey and bring 10 billion cubic metres of gas a day into Europe.

To bring gas from the Shah Deniz field to the European market, the BP-led investors had asked for proposals to build a pipeline. The two main offers had come from the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline consortium, a group comprising E.ON, Statoil and Swiss energy company Axpo, and the Nabucco pipeline venture whose stakeholders include OMV and France’s GDF Suez, as well as partners from Turkey, Bulgaria,

Romania and Hungary – the countries where the pipeline was.
As The Times highlighted in its coverage of the news, the BP-led consortium had eight criteria for choosing a winner, including deliverability, the stability of the political regimes in countries through which the pipeline would pass, expenses and the cost of gas at the point where it would be sold.

**Nabucco West Project Not Selected**
The Azeri government is expected to announce the winner tomorrow. OMV said in a statement yesterday that it was informed by the Shah Deniz II consortium that the Nabucco West project had not been selected.
“While OMV accepts the decision of the consortium, OMV is of the opinion that the offer which was submitted by NGPI (Nabucco Gas Pipeline International) met all the selection criteria and was highly competitive,” the Austrian company said.
Bloomberg quoted Azerbaijan’s Energy Minister Natig Aliyev as saying earlier in June that the country needed “project effectiveness with the best conditions”, adding that commercial viability was the number one criterion in the choice.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the European Commission, which had said that it did not favour either project, had declined to comment ahead of Friday’s official announcement by Azerbaijan.
!m[Rival Nabucco Pipeline Loses Contest](/uploads/story/3456/thumbs/pic1_inline.jpg)
**BP’s share price was 0.21 percent down at 451.05p in London as of 10:30 BST on 27 June 2013. In New York, it was 0.55 percent down at $41.60 in pre-market trading as of 04:55 EDT.**
**E.ON’s share price was 0.06 percent down at €12.38 in Frankfurt and 0.24 percent up at €12.36 on the Deutsche Boerse Xetra as of 11:18 CEST.**
**OMV’s share price was 0.64 percent down at €34.85 in Vienna as of 11:17 CEST.**
**Start Trading in less than 60 seconds >>** 
Stocks designed to earn you profit without having to buy shares.