Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb. 15 / Trend V. Zhavoronkova /
The European Commission will welcome any gas pipeline project aimed to transport Caspian gas to Europe if it is scalable and based on intergovernmental agreement, the Energy Department of the European Commission (EC) said.
"The Nabucco is our priority project but if the Azerbaijani Shah Deniz consortium decides to give gas to another pipeline including Trans-Anatolia Pipeline (TANAP) we would welcome this if two conditions are taken into account," Marlene Holzner, a spokesperson of EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger, told Trend over phone from Brussels.
She said that the first condition is that the project needs to be scalable. This means that in the future it should be able to transport more gas because the plan is to get the fuel not only from Azerbaijan, but also from Turkmenistan.
The second thing is that the EU would like to see is an international governmental agreement for the pipeline, which the consortium will choose.
For Nabucco the sides have already got a similar agreement stipulating such details as the lack of interruption in gas supplies, Holzner said.
"That is a very clear contract," she added. "So we want to see that whatever pipeline will be built, it will have this kind of international agreement between the governments."
Holzner stressed that the decision on which pipeline will get the gas from Azerbaijan has to be taken by the Shah Deniz consortium.
TANAP is a proposed Azerbaijan-Turkish project which envisages a construction of pipeline from the eastern border of Turkey to the country's western border. Azerbaijan and Turkey signed a memorandum of understanding to establish the consortium that will build a gas pipeline. The cost of TANAP will be set by SOCAR and may be close to the figure of $5 billion.
The parties involved in the project intend to resolve all issues on this gas pipeline in 2012. They also plan to commence construction immediately in order to complete it by late 2017. The second stage of development of the Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas condensate field will be launched by late 2017. The initial capacity of the pipeline will be 16 billion cubic meters. Some
On Oct. 1, the southern gas Corridor projects (Nabucco, Trans Adriatic Pipeline and ITGI), submitted their final proposals to the Azerbaijani side, which will review them in accordance with previously announced criteria.
The decision on the preferable transportation route is expected to be made in the first quarter of 2012.Azerbaijan plans to export 10 billion cubic metres of gas within the Shah Deniz-2 project.