A key decision about the planned Nabucco gas pipeline will be delayed by one year to mid-2013, the project's Austrian partner OMV said Wednesday, February 22.

The preferred supplier for the pipeline from Central Asia to Europe is the Shah Deniz gas field in Azerbaijan.

However the consortium managing Shah Deniz - led by British energy group BP - will not decide until next year which pipeline to supply, OMV chief executive Gerhard Roiss said.

The Nabucco plan remained alive 12 years after it was initiated, Roiss said, adding, “It is not we who decide the timing of Nabucco, but those who have the gas.”

The Shah Deniz consortium is mulling bids from Nabucco, from the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, and from the Greek-Italian project IGI-Poseidon.

The Turkish government said last month that it no longer fully supported Nabucco and is instead prioritizing its own rival TANAP project.

Nabucco's shareholders are energy companies in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey.

OMV also reported that its net profit rose 30 per cent last year, to 1.57 billion euros (2.08 billion dollars). Revenues rose as oil prices were buoyed by the upheavals of the Arab spring, the company said.