Azerbaijan, Baku, June 4 / Trend E. Ismailov /
The participation of SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan) in the process of privatisation of the Greek DEPA company is not associated with the selection of the route of Azerbaijani gas supplies to Europe, a senior official of SOCAR said on Tuesday.
In turn, the supply route for Azerbaijani gas to Europe according to SOCAR, will be chosen by the end of this month.
"These two issues are not inter-connected," the SOCAR representative said.
According to him, legal, commercial and technical aspects are considered when choosing the route.
Here both pipeline projects, according SOCAR representative are technically well developed and therefore considered in terms of commercial expediency and legal aspects.
Two pipelines, TAP and Nabucco West, are currently competing over the transportation of Azerbaijani gas to the European markets. The gas which will be produced within the second stage of development of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas condensate field is considered as the main source for these pipeline projects.
The TAP project is designed to transport gas from the Caspian region via Greece and Albania and across the Adriatic Sea to southern Italy and further into Western Europe. TAP's initial pipeline capacity will be 10 billion cubic meters per year, but is easily expandable to 20 billion cubic meters per year. TAP's shareholders are AXPO of Switzerland (42.5 per cent), Norway's Statoil (42.5 per cent) and E.ON Ruhrgas of Germany (15 per cent).
Nabucco West envisages construction of a 1300 kilometre-long pipeline (Bulgaria - 412 km, Romania - 469 km, Hungary - 384 kilometres and Austria - 47 kilometres) from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to the Austrian Baumgarten.