Ankara backing Nabucco rival?

Ankara supports a natural gas pipeline from the Shah Deniz 2 field in Azerbaijan that could be seen as a direct competitor to Nabucco, an official said. Nabucco is up against the Interconnector Turkey-Greece and the Trans Adriatic Pipeline projects. Baku said it would deliver as much as 350 billion cubic feet of natural gas per year from its Shah Deniz 2 project in the Caspian Sea through whichever project it picks. Ankara is working with Azerbaijan to develop a pipeline that could carry natural gas across Turkey by utilizing existing networks, the Platts news service reports, citing an unidentified spokesman in the Turkish Energy Ministry. Washington last week was forced to issue a statement clarifying its stance on Nabucco after an envoy was perceived as saying the U.S. government was starting to lose interest in the pipeline. Ankara, however, said it would support Nabucco and the other gas pipelines outlined in what Europe has dubbed the Southern Corridor. Europe seeks to break Russia's grip on the regional energy sector through those projects. Europe gets about 20 percent of its gas from Russia though 80 percent of that runs through Soviet-era pipelines in Ukraine.