What’s next for AMBO?

By Altin Fuga
Tirana, May 16, 2008. The AMBO project has remained in paper until now. In his presentation to the Crans Montana Economic Forum organised in Tirana last week, the CEO of the project, Ted Ferguson, said that project can began after 6 months. The project was launched some ten years ago. However, the project is delayed because of the rising prices of steel and the slowness of the respective governments to approve the deal. In his presentation Ted Ferguson focused on the advantages of AMBO compared to other oil pipelines, mainly those that cross through Turkey.
Ferguson explained that the total cost of the project was increased considerably because of the increase of the steel prices. The price of oil is increased considerably during the last 2 years also. Therefore, the investors and the transporters are unsure about the profit margins. The governments should discuss these problems once more and agree about the economic side of the project.
Ferguson said that the company was going to focus on the next 6 months in calculating once again the cost of the project, preparing prognosis about the possible cost of oil transport through the pipeline and profit margins for the investors. At the same time, they were going to study the environmental impact of the project and present all these data to the respective governments.
Walter Schwimmer, former general secretary of the Council of Europe, declared during the meeting that the project is very important for Albania. Schwimmer praised also the project Trans Adriatic Pipeline which is a joint project between Swiss EGL and Norwegian StatoilHydro.
According to the project, AMBO pipeline is going to be 913 km long, connecting together the port town Burgas in Bulgaria, through Macedonia, with the Adriatic shore of Albania. The pipeline is going to have the capacity to transport 750,000 barrels of oil everyday and Albania is supposed to earn around $50-60 million every year. It was planed that AMBO was going to end to the Albanian harbour closed to Vlora. However, AMBO has changed its plans and probably the pipeline is going to end on the area close to Semani. The crude oil is going to be bought from countries of the Black Sea, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. Ferguson said that oil can be sold further to the Mediterranean countries, and even USA.