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Two pipelines to ship natural gas to Europe are now moving into the engineering stage, while Italy’s newest liquefied-natural-gas terminal remains stalled by police investigations and regulatory snags. The projects, together estimated to cost $10.2 billion, will deliver nearly 50 billion cubic meters of gas per year to the region.

The biggest project, Nabucco pipeline, is scheduled to ship 31 billion cu m per year from 2013. The newly launched Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) will carry another 10 billion cu m, with the option of doubling, a year to two sooner. Stalled but 40% built, the Brindisi LNG facility, in the heel of Italy, will import 8 billion cu m after construction resumes.

Nabucco and TAP will equate to 12% to 15% of Europe’s piped imports in 2006, nearly half from Russia, reports BP Statistical Review. Demand will rise 60%, to nearly 800 billion cu m, in 20 years, according to Nabucco’s developer.

“Detailed technical planning has now started,” says Reinhard Mitschek, managing director of Nabucco Gas Pipeline International GmbH, Vienna. Last month, the company hired London-based Penspen Ltd. as its engineer on the $7.3-billion project. Penspen will advise on technical issues and manage front-end engineering and design (FEED) by consortium partners in each country. The firm also will prepare construction bid documents.

The Nabucco line will run 3,300 kilometers through Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to Baumgarten near Vienna. It is owned by the major gas companies in Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Romania and Turkey.

This month, Switzerland-based EGL Group signed Norway’s StatoilHydro A.S. as equal partner in the $2.2-billion Trans Adriatic Pipeline. FEED is now in hand, and the joint venture will decide next year whether to go ahead.

TAP “matches Europe’s needs to diversify gas sources via the shortest route along a new Eurasian corridor,’’ says Joachim Conrad, EGL’s gas division chief. Starting from existing lines from the Caspian Sea, the 520-km-long TAP will run west across northern Greece, from Thessaloniki through Albania. It will cross under 115 km of the Adriatic Sea, landing close to Brindisi.

BG Group plc’s $730-million Brindisi plant will process 8 billion cu m of LNG imports. Work halted a year ago when Italian authorities seized the site in a corruption probe involving former BG staff, says BG spokesman Neill Burrows.

There have been no prosecutions, but the site is “still impounded,” says Burrows. The Italian government also belatedly required an environmental impact assessment last October, he adds. BG began work on the two-tank project in 2005, and has spent $300 million.