Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb.13
By Anakhanum Hidayatova - Trend:
The implementation of the AGRI project (Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romanian Interconnector) mainly depends on Azerbaijan, Georgian Energy Minister Kakha Kaladze told Trend on Feb.13.
"It is a very interesting project and its implementation depends not only on Georgia," he said. "If it would depend on us only, we would implement it, but many things depend on Azerbaijan as well."
UK's Penspen engineering company has already completed the entire work on the project's feasibility study, said Kaladze.
"Following this, we will decide on further steps. It is also planned to submit this project for consideration of the EU."
AGRI project envisages the transportation of Azerbaijani gas to the Black Sea coast of Georgia via the gas pipelines. Azerbaijani gas delivered to Georgia's Black Sea coast, will be liquefied at a special terminal and following this, it will be delivered to a terminal at Romanian port of Constanta with tankers.
Further, it will be brought to the gaseous state and sent via the country's gas infrastructure for meeting the demands of Romania and other European countries.
The cost of the project will vary from 1.2 billion euros to 4.5 billion euros, according to the preliminary estimations. The project's cost will depend on the capacity of terminals that can be equal to 2-8 billion cubic meters of gas per year.
The participants of the AGRI project are the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), Georgia's Oil and Gas Corporation, as well as MVM (Hungary) and Romgaz (Romania) companies.
The sides established SC AGRI LNG Project Company SRL joint venture in February 2011 for the implementation of the project.
Edited by SI