Azerbaijan, Baku, Sept. 6 / Trend /
The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) intends to retain 51 percent of its share in the Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline (TANAP), SOCAR head Rovnag Abdullayev told reporters on Thursday.
He said Turkey will own 20 percent of the equity. The remaining 29 percent will be distributed among the new shareholders.
Such companies as Total, BP and Statoil have already appealed to receive shares in the project, Abdullayev said.
He previously noted that project participants will be companies with gas reserves.
On June 26, 2012, Azerbaijan and Turkey signed an intergovernmental agreement on TANAP implementation.
In December 2011, Azerbaijan and Turkey signed a memorandum of understanding to establish the consortium that will build a gas pipeline to supply gas from Shah Deniz gas field to Europe through Turkey. BOTAS has a 20 per cent stake in TANAP, while SOCAR holds 80 per cent in the project.
The initial capacity of the pipeline will be 16 billion cubic meters. Some 6 billion cubic meters of the volume will be supplied to Turkey, while the rest will be transported to Europe.