POTENTIAL IRAQ CONNECTION KEEPS NABUCCO PIPELINE PROJECT ON LIFE SUPPORT (Eurasia analysis)

Could supplies from gas fields in northern Iraq breath new life into the troubled Nabucco pipeline, a project designed to free the European Union from Russia’s virtual gas supply monopoly?

That was certainly the hope created by the May 17 announcement that a consortium of European and Middle Eastern energy companies completed a deal to develop gas resources in Northern Iraq, part of which would be used to kick start the flow of energy via the long-stalled Nabucco route.

"It’s an important and promising development for the acquisition of a huge volume of natural gas for Turkey and for Europe via Nabucco," the pipeline project’s managing director, Reinhard Mitschek, said of the $8 billion deal between Austria’s OMV AG and Hungary’s MOL, and the United Arab Emirates’ Dana Gas and Crescent Petroleum, which currently operate a gas site in northern Iraq.