Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb. 14 / Trend A. Badalova /
Azerbaijan-Turkish Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) with initial capacity of 16 billion cubic meters, can be expanded and replace the Nabucco project to transport natural gas only to the EU, Anadolu agency quotes the European Commission's report sent to member countries' partners on the energy sector.
The European Commission said the EU needs a pipeline to transport Azerbaijani gas to Europe through the Turkish territory, and it must be large enough to transport more Caspian gas to Europe.
"The latest interruption in the supply of natural gas from Turkey to Greece necessitates the new pipeline to be used only for transporting natural gas to the EU. Otherwise, the demand in Turkey may cause interruptions by creating problems for the European natural gas consumers," the report said.
TANAP is a proposed Azerbaijan-Turkish project which envisages a construction of pipeline from the eastern border of Turkey to the country's western border. Azerbaijan and Turkey signed a memorandum of understanding to establish the consortium that will build a gas pipeline. The cost of TANAP will be set by SOCAR and may be close to the figure of $5 billion.
The parties involved in the project intend to resolve all issues on this gas pipeline in 2012. They also plan to commence construction immediately in order to complete it by late 2017. The second stage of development of the Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas condensate field will be launched by late 2017. The initial capacity of the pipeline will be 16 billion cubic meters. Some
6 billion cubic meters of the volume will be allocated to Turkey, while the rest will be transported to Europe.
Nabucco gas pipeline, which is one of the projects within the Southern Gas Corridor, is designed to transport gas from the Caspian region and Middle East to Europe. According to the overall conception of Nabucco project, the pipeline will be laid from the Georgian-Turkish and Iraqi-Turkish borders to the Austrian Baumgarten. It will run through Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria over a distance of 3900 kilometres. Gas which will be produced during the second stage of Shah Deniz field development is considered as the main source for Nabucco project.