Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 13
By Azad Hasanli – Trend:
Turkey will try to finish the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline Project (TANAP) ahead of schedule, Turkish Ambassador to Azerbaijan Erkan Ozoral said.
Ozoral made remarks at a meeting with Azerbaijan’s Energy Minister Natig Aliyev in Baku Dec. 13.
Ozoral noted that Turkey plans to intensify energy cooperation with Azerbaijan.
“We are proud that Azerbaijan is the largest foreign investor in Turkey,” Azerbaijan’s Energy Ministry reported citing Ozoral. “In turn, Turkey is interested to enhance its participation in the new stage of Azerbaijan’s economic development.”
Minister Natig Aliyev said that cooperation between Turkey and Azerbaijan is based on the friendly and fraternal relations and is at a high level in all directions.
Such joint projects as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline and the TANAP show that ensuring the region’s energy security is impossible without the participation of Azerbaijan and Turkey, Aliyev added.
Earlier, Saltuk Duzyol, head of TANAP consortium, said that the construction work as part of the TANAP is 55 percent complete. The first gas via TANAP will be delivered to Turkey’s BOTAS company in June 2018 and to the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) on the border with Greece in June 2019, Duzyol said.
TANAP project envisages transportation of gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz field to the western borders of Turkey. The length of TANAP is 1,800 kilometers with the initial capacity of 16 billion cubic meters.
Around six billion cubic meters of this gas will be delivered to Turkey and the remaining volume will be supplied to Europe.
The gas will be delivered to Turkey in 2018, and after completion of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline’s construction, the gas will be delivered to Europe in early 2020.
TANAP shareholders are Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR (58 percent), BOTAS (30 percent) and BP (12 percent).
