Azerbaijan, Baku, July 4 / Trend A. Badalova/
The partners of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz field development may join the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) within 30 days of the decision on the selection of the project as the route to transport "Shah Deniz-2" gas to Europe, the source in TAP told Trend.
"BP, Total and State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) all have the option to join TAP within 30 days of the decision," the source wrote in an e-mail.
The source stressed that these Shah Deniz Consortium members each have options to purchase shares in TAP which if exercised in full would give them a total ownership of 50 percent of TAP.
TAP was officially announced by the Shah Deniz Consortium as the selected pipeline to transport its gas to Europe on June 28. Another pipeline vying for Azerbaijani gas transportation to Europe was Nabucco West.
TAP's current shareholders are AXPO of Switzerland (42.5 percent), Norway's Statoil (42.5 percent) and E.ON of Germany (15 percent).
In January, 2013, TAP and its shareholders concluded a Shareholder Agreement with three members of the Shah Deniz Consortium: SOCAR, BP and Total. The Shareholder Agreement, finalized and initialed by all parties, stipulates how the TAP Joint Venture will be governed by an enlarged shareholder group comprising of Statoil, E.ON, Axpo, SOCAR, BP and Total as shareholders.
The source in TAP said that it is not clear what the final shareholding structure of TAP will look like given the interest from other shareholders such as Belgian Fluxys who have also indicated their interest to join TAP following the selection.
The TAP project is designed to transport gas from the Caspian region via Greece and Albania and across the Adriatic Sea to the south of Italy and further to Western Europe. Gas which will be produced during the second stage of Shah Deniz field development is considered as the main source for the project.
The TAP route will be approximately 870 kilometers in length (Greece 550 km; Albania 210 km; offshore Adriatic Sea 15km; Italy 5 km). TAP's initial pipeline capacity will be 10 billion cubic meters per year, but it will be easily expandable to 20 billion cubic meters per year.