Turkey and Azerbaijan will sign a memorandum of understanding on Monday, establishing a consortium that will build a pipeline to ship natural gas from the BP Plc-operated Shah Deniz field to Europe via Anatolia, Bloomberg reported.
State Oil Co. of Azerbaijan, or Socar, Turkey's state-owned pipeline operator Botas Boru Hatlari Ile Petrol Tasima AS and oil firm Turkiye Petrolleri AO will be the founding members of the organization, which may add more international oil and gas companies going forward, the Turkish Energy Ministry said Sunay in an e-mailed statement.
The Trans-Anatolia pipeline is planned to be completed by 2017, when the second phase of Shah Deniz starts producing gas, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said on Nov. 18. It's too early to provide a cost for the project, he said when asked about Socar's estimate of as much as $6 billion, according to state-run Anatolia news agency.
Yildiz and Natig Aliyev, Azerbaijan's energy minister, will sign the agreement, according to today's statement. The pipeline may be linked with Nabucco, the OMV AG-led project designed to bring Caspian-region natural gas to the European Union, Yildiz said last month.