After being initially proposed to transport natural gas from Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan to Austria through Turkey in 1998, the Nabucco pipeline project was ultimately abandoned in 2013. Its shelving gave way to the Southern Gas Corridor, which was subsequently built to deliver Azerbaijani gas to Italy. Over fifteen years of its existence from conception to shelving, the pipeline project underwent significant highs and lows but it also generated so much hype and political fanfare that, when it was finally scrapped, many of its actors had to cope with hard times and move on with their personal and professional lives. Based on ethnographic material, this lecture discusses the excessive emotional investment in a shelved gas pipeline project by its actors. One of the first gas pipeline projects that made the idea of bringing previously untapped, new gas from geographically distant locations to Europe via uncharted routes viable in the minds of its actors, Nabucco ultimately effectuated a new geopolitical imaginary to ensure energy supply security by transnational infrastructural means, leaving a greater imprint behind.

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THE LECTURE WILL BE HYBRID.

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