Nabucco Gas Pipeline, which plans to pump gas from central Asia to Europe starting in 2013, said a survey of potential customers showed its capacity would be overbooked from the first day it goes on stream.

The survey asked potential shippers to declare their interests on a non-binding basis, said Nabucco, a consortium led by Austrian oil and gas group OMV.
The survey was done last month in preparation for the more formal open-season process in which customers make binding bids for capacity, which Nabucco said will start once the legal framework for Nabucco was established.
The planned 3,300 kilometre (2,051 mile) pipeline has been touted by the European Union as a major cornerstone in its strategy to diversify energy supplies away from Russia towards sources in central Asia and the Middle East.
It has been delayed multiple times amid uncertainty the project can secure enough supplies from nations once part of the Soviet Union and which are subject to intense lobbying by Russia’s Gazprom, whose planned Southstream pipeline will rival Nabucco.
Those concerns were heightened by the recent conflict in Georgia, a country on whose border Nabucco is planned to begin.