Azerbaijan, Baku, March 30 / Trend, E.Ismayilov/
In the coming days, long-term gas buyers in Europe will present their proposals to the Shah Deniz Consortium regarding the price of Azerbaijani gas, President of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), Rovnag Abdullayev told journalists on Saturday.
He said the proposals will be assessed by late April, and in June 2013, a final decision is planned to be made regarding choosing of a pipeline route (TAP and Nabucco West) for gas supplies to Europe.
The Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) project submitted a comprehensive transportation bid to the Shah Deniz consortium.
"At present, the Nabucco Consortium decides technical issues within preparation of its final proposal regarding the Nabucco-West project," Abdullayev said.
Nabucco West is a short-cut version of Nabucco project, which envisages construction of the pipeline from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to Austria. Gas to be produced within the second phase of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas condensate field development is considered as the main source for the project.
The project's current shareholders are Bulgarian Energy Holding, Romanian Transgaz, Turkish Botas, Austrian OMV, German RWE and Hungary's FGSZ.
In June, 2012 the consortium of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas field development chose Nabucco West as the single pipeline option for the potential export of Shah Deniz Stage 2 gas to Central Europe.
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 initial pipeline capacity will be 10 billion cubic metres per year, but it is easily expandable to 20 billion cubic metres per year.
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.