Construction of gas pipeline "South Stream" begins at the 'Russkaya' compressor station site near Anapa. The 900 kilometer long and maximum 2 kilometer deep "South Stream" will carry Russian gas to southern Europe through the Black Sea. South Stream begins from Russia's Anapa on the Black Sea shore, crosses the sea and comes to Bulgaria. Further transportation will be made via territories of Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovenia to northern Italy. From the territory of Serbia, there will be gas transporting lines to Croatia and to the Republic of Srpska. The new pipeline will be able to carry 63 billion cubic meters gas. The first gas is expected to be pumped through the pipeline in 2015, and export some 63 billion cubic meters to southern Europe. After beginning of construction, Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Taner Yildiz told reporters, that Turkey is not planning to take part in the South Stream gas pipeline project, being more interested in Nabucco-West and the Trans-Anatolian natural gas pipeline projects. However, Turkey is interested to increase Russian gas imports to satisfy its growing domestic demand, he said and added that it had not yet been decided which route to use for that, either the Blue Stream pipeline or a pipeline traversing Bulgaria.

After Azerbaijan and Turkey signed an inter-governmental agreement in Istanbul on construction of Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) on June 26, Georgia started talking about another Nabucco rival project. According to local mass media, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Georgia Grigol Vashadze announced that Georgia is ready to implement AGRI (Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romania Interconnector) pipeline construction project, which will supply gas from the Caspian region to Europe bypassing Russia. He also added that although Nabucco is fundamentally important project, its implementation is postponed from year to year. So Georgia offers AGRI, as it is much cheaper and much faster to carry out than Nabucco. In 2010, the presidents of Azerbaijan, Romania and Georgia signed a memorandum on implementation of the project. The AGRI is a proposed project to transport Azerbaijani natural gas to Romania and further to Central Europe. Natural gas would be transported by pipeline from Azerbaijan to the Black Sea coast of Georgia. The liquefied natural gas export terminal (LNG plant) would be built. Liquefied natural gas will be transported by LNG tankers to the Constan?a terminal in Romania. After regasification natural gas will be delivered through the existing gas grid to Romania and other European countries. According to business newspaper "Vzgliad", the prospects for Nabucco are vague, as it is too expensive. It was found that the project cost will be US$ 19 billion instead of planned 10 billion. In addition, it simply had nothing to fill, as pipeline from Azerbaijan to Europe will carry 10 billion cubic meters gas a year. This is only a third of the Nabucco capacity. So project managers decided to reduce the pipeline length of almost three times. Short version of Nabucco will be about 1300 kilometers long, and it will run across the 4 countries starting from Turkish-Bulgarian border to Austrian Baumgarten city. However Russian experts believe that AGRI Implementation chances are quiet low, because of low capacity. According to analyst Gregory Birg, AGRI project cost less than the main alternatives are considered, and may be about US$ 2-5 billion to build, depending on capacity, which may vary from 2 to 8 billion cubic meters a year. At the same time the cost of the "South stream" can reach US$ 20-25 billion (63 billion cubic meters) and the construction of Nabucco(31 billion cubic meters), according to some estimates, may be only a little cheaper.

Azerbaijan and Turkey yesterday signed an inter-governmental agreement in Istanbul on construction of Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP). Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev participated in the signing ceremony. The new pipeline will carry up to 16 billion cubic meters gas a year from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz gas field through Turkey as far as its European borders. The project is in direct competition with the multinational Nabucco pipeline project sponsored by a consortium that includes OMV and RWE and is baked by the European Commission, Russian Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes. The founders of the new consortium are Azerbaijani State Oil Company with 80 percent shares, Turkish Botas oil state gas company and Turkiye Petrolleri Oil Company with 20 percent shares. In future other international oil-gas companies also may join the consortium. "We are going to solve all the issues connected with the project and without losing time pass to the construction works so that the new pipeline be ready by 2017," Rovnag Abdulayev, chairman of the Azerbaijani state oil company said. 2000 kilometers long new pipeline starts from Azerbaijan and stretches to either Greece or Bulgarian border through Turkey's territory. The first phase of the gas pipeline construction is said to cost US$ 7-8 billion.

On July 25 Iran, Iraq and Syria agreed to build a major gas pipeline to transfer the country's natural gas from Iran's South Pars gas field to Eastern Mediterranean countries and Europe, reported ITAR-TASS. It should be noted, that this project would set a serious rival to EU gas pipeline Nabucco - from Central Asia and Caspian region to the EU. The construction of a new 5000km pipeline, which is also called the "Islamic Gas Pipeline", will cost about US$ 10 billion. It is expected that the new pipeline would ultimately have the capacity to pump 110 million cubic meters of natural gas per day. A 1500 km section from southern Iran to Damascus will be commissioned in the period between 2014 and 2016. New gas pipeline will ship gas from South Pars to Iraq then to Lebanon, eastern Mediterranean countries and Europe. International consortium is created for the pipeline construction. At the signing-ceremony of a gas pipeline agreement, Iran's caretaker Oil Minister Mohammad Aliabadi said that Europe is in dire need of Iran's gas, according to the official IRNA news agency. Aliabadi said this agreement would strengthen trilateral relations among the three Islamic countries and it will also lead to ensuring economic security in the region, said the report. According to research by BP, Iran has roughly 28 trillion cubic meters of natural gas - the second largest reserves in the world after Russia with reserves about 45 trillion cubic meters.