Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 26 / Trend A. Tagiyeva /
Jordan is interested in increasing gas supplies to the country and is looking towards Azerbaijan to be its provider, spokesman for the Jordanian Energy Ministry Mahmoud Al-Ais told Trend over phone on Wednesday.
He said that the signing of the Azerbaijani gas agreement transited through Turkey creates additional opportunities for Jordan to buy gas.
He stressed that Jordan has conducted talks with Qatar to increase gas purchase, but no agreement was reached in this issue. After the Azerbaijani-Turkish agreement is signed, Jordan will take the initiative to purchase gas from Azerbaijan and intensify negotiations.
Mr Al-Ais said: "Jordan has considered the purchase of Azerbaijani gas offshore from Turkey and onshore by joining the Azerbaijani-Turkish gas pipeline to the Pan-Arab pipeline. The agreement between Turkey and Azerbaijan will facilitate that purchase."
He said that Jordan intends to build a new terminal for receiving liquefied natural gas in the port of Aqaba adding that at present, the main issue is the price at which Jordan will buy the gas. In the case of reaching an agreed price with Azerbaijan, Jordan will begin a more active phase of negotiations.
He went on to say said that in case of reaching an agreement, Jordan plans to buy about 4.2 million cubic meters of gas per day (150 million cubic feet) from Azerbaijan which is more than 1.5 billion cubic meters per year.
Today Azerbaijan and Turkey signed a package of gas contracts, which includes issues of cost of Azerbaijani gas for Turkey in the second stage of Shah Deniz, the volume of gas supplies to Turkey from the field after 2017, as well as a transit agreement for Azerbaijani gas transportation through Turkey.
The gas produced during the second stage of Shah Deniz field development is regarded as the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor project. Within Shah Deniz-2 project, Azerbaijan is planning to deliver 10 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe. Now partners in the Shah Deniz development consider proposals from these pipeline projects to determine the route via which Azerbaijani gas will be delivered to Europe.
The South Gas Corridor is one of the priority energy projects for the EU. It intends to diversify routes and sources of energy supply and increase EU energy security.