Capacity Trading

Mission Statement

Nabucco Gas Pipeline International GmbH (NIC) has been set up to develop and construct the pipeline, and to sell / rent pipeline transport capacity on a short or long- term basis to interested shippers. In order to allocate gas transport capacities, an Open Season process - a special form of capacity auction - will be carried out to allow potential shippers to express their interest in the project and to make firm bookings.

The mission of the Nabucco Capacity Marketing team is to prepare a non-discriminatory and transparent Open Season process, to set up the contractual framework for concluding transport agreements, to define a competitive transport tariff and market the Nabucco transport capacity successfully to gas shippers in order to support the overall Nabucco mission of contributing to the security of supply for all partner countries, and Europe as a whole.

Open Season

Details of the Nabucco Open Season process shall be provided on the Nabucco Open Season webpage in due course.

The Open Season process will include a preparatory phase and an execution phase. The preparatory phase has started and the execution phase will start as soon as the supply commitments are in place.

During the preparatory phase, Nabucco will work on the harmonisation of the contractual framework in line with regulatory requirements; the division of responsibilities between NIC and the Nabucco National Companies for the handling of transportation issues; the definition and detail engineering of the specific transport products to be offered during the Open Season process. In addition, Nabucco shareholder approval, third party shipper  consultation (including shipper conference), as well as national regulators and lenders consultation are carried out.

During the execution phase, potential shippers are invited to express their interest in the project and make firm bookings for pipeline transport capacity. This phase includes a separate shareholder shipper bid phase and a separate all shipper (i.e. including third party as well as shareholder shipper) bid phase.

In line with the Nabucco received grant of exemptions from certain provisions of the regulation for the network access of third parties, the open season will first be addressed to the Nabucco Shareholders for an amount up to 15 bcm per year (i.e. ca. 50% of Nabucco's transportation capacity). In the second step, Nabucco will offer the remaining 50 percent to external companies (“third party access”), offering them the same conditions and transparency. In this procedure all market participants will have the possibility of securing long-term contracts.

Contractual Framework

In order to secure long term contractual relationships with interested shippers, Nabucco has designed the following preliminary contract structure model. More details can be found on the Nabucco Open Season Webpage:

The agreement between NIC and the Shipper is made up of the Long Term Transportation Agreement (LTTA), the Network Code and additional Annexes.

The LTTA encompasses general legal concepts such as Interpretations, Term and Effectiveness, Invoicing and Payments, Taxes, Insurance and Credit Support, Change in Law Provisions, Indemnities, Limitations of Liabilities, Termination, Representation and Warranties, Confidentiality, Governing Law and Dispute Resolution.

The Network Code handles more technical concepts such as Transportation Services for the Contracted Capacities, Force Majeure, Nominations and Deliveries, Fuel Gas, Maintenance, Gas Specifications, Tariff Methodology, Metering and Measuring, Provision of Information and Data Handling and Operational Guidelines.

The Annexes include provisions for Credit Support to protect the creditworthiness of the portfolio of shippers, Conditions Precedent to determine the effectiveness of the LTTAs, as well as Summary Provisions as outlined in the Term Sheet.

Transport Products

The Nabucco transport products to be sold during the Open Season process (or thereafter) are summarised in the following table. Specifically, an individual transport product is identified by a particular combination of the following main characteristics:

PARAMETER NAME	PARAMETER VALUE
Firmness	Firm service Interruptible service
Product term	Long term: More than 1 year and up to 25 years Short term: 1 year 1 month Daily Products
“Shape” of booked capacity (only for products with a term > 1 year)	Uniform Ramp up (i.e. increasing to a plateau)
Flow direction	Regular flow Commercial reverse flow Physical reverse flow

Contact

For further information, please contact:

Mr. Federico Ferretto – Head of Capacity Trading
Email: Federico.ferretto@nabucco-pipeline.com

Mr. Matthias Pickl - Manager Capacity Trading
Email: matthias.pickl@nabucco-pipeline.com
Tel. +43 (1) 27777-200