Azerbaijan, Baku, April 11 / Trend A. Badalova /
Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) believes more than one pipeline will be needed within the Southern Gas Corridor in the long term perspective.
"As the Southern Gas Corridor becomes a reality, more gas will flow and there will be a demand for more than just one pipeline," Lisa Givert, Head of Communications at TAP project wrote Trend in an e-mail on Thursday.
However, she stressed that at this time, 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) within the Shah Deniz-2 project are the only gas volumes available and on sale today.
"This means there are currently only enough gas volumes available for one pipeline to be built," Givert said, adding that TAP is being built to transport 10 bcm of Shah Deniz-2 volumes, but can easily expand to more than 20 bcm per year, as and when gas volumes become available.
On Wednesday, Platts reported with the reference to the director general of Turkish Foreign Ministry's department for multilateral economic affairs and energy, Mithat Rende, that in the long run, both, the Nabucco West and the TAP pipelines, will be necessary.
Platts reported that Rende's comment reflects a strengthening emphasis that the projected Southern Gas Corridor must be of sufficient size to carry not only gas from Shah Deniz, but substantial volumes of gas from other Azerbaijani fields and perhaps from Iraq as well.
With regard to the further volumes of gas, which will be available from other fields in Azerbaijan, Givert said TAP is scalable and has been designed to more than double its capacity, "so it can easily accommodate further gas volumes following the initial Shah Deniz II gas volumes."
This week, Total E&P Azerbaijan said it expects to receive its first gas from the Absheron field in Azerbaijan in 2020. The field's potential reserves amount to 350 billion cubic meters of gas and 45 million tons of condensate. According to the General Manager of Total E&P Azerbaijan, Christian Giudicelli, during first phase of the field's development, the annual production volume is expected to be three to five billion cubic meters.
In late March, Nabucco Gas Pipeline International GmbH and TAP submitted their final offers to the consortium of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz field development. The offers will allow the Shah Deniz consortium to conduct the final evaluation of each of the transportation options and make a final decision on the preferred export route to Europe in June, 2013.
The TAP project is designed to transport gas from the Caspian region via Greece and Albania and across the Adriatic Sea to southern Italy and further into Western Europe. TAP's shareholders are AXPO of Switzerland (42.5 percent), Norway's Statoil (42.5 percent) and E.ON Ruhrgas of Germany (15 percent).
In case of choosing TAP as a final pipeline route to transport Azerbaijani gas to Europe, the construction of the pipeline will start in 2015.