Azerbaijan, Baku, July 20 / Trend E. Ismayilov /
Executive Director of the Italian company Eni, Paolo Scaroni discussed a project of transportation and transit of Turkmen gas via Azerbaijan, a statement said.
At present, a delegation headed by Eni director general Paolo Scaroni is in Baku.
The project envisages the transportation and transit of several billion cubic meters of compressed (CNG) Turkmen gas via the Caspian Sea to the coast of Azerbaijan. It will be transported by pipeline to other countries. ENI director general has recently met with representatives of Russia, the U.S. and EU to discuss technical, financial and commercial aspects of the project.
This project is new for the region. It will significantly reduce the volume of gas flared in Turkmenistan, the company said.
Eni is ready to use CNG technologies. They will allow transporting high-pressure gas through vessels equipped with a special system. After delivery to the ports, the gas will be ready for transportation via pipelines.
Eni previously suggested SOCAR to participate in transportation projects of 8.6 billion cubic meters of gas from Turkmenistan. The project envisages the transportation of compressed gas via the Caspian Sea by the vessels. The parties in the joint working group will examine the whole range of issues within the project, in particular, technical, legal and commercial issues.
The participation of Eni in the extractive sector of Azerbaijan was discussed at the meeting.
Azerbaijani Industry and Energy Minister Natig Aliyev and Italy's ENI President Paolo Scaroni mulled the possibility of the company's participation in a project to develop Azerbaijan's prospective offshore structures Dan Ulduzu and Ashrafi on Tuesday in Baku.
Earlier, foreign companies have carried out work on prospective offshore structures Dan Ulduzu and Ashrafi. However, the contract was closed due to discovery of commercially unattractive volume of hydrocarbons. The contract on development of offshore Ashrafi-Dan Ulduzu block of fields was signed Dec. 14, 1996. Ashrafi-Dan Ulduzu participating interests were: BP - 30 percent, Unocal - 25.5 percent, Itochu - 20 percent, Delta Hess - 4.5 percent, SOCAR - 20 percent.
Today Eni with five percent participates in a consortium of oil pipeline Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan. It transports oil from the bloc of offshore oil and gas fields "Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli" in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea.