Azerbaijan, Baku, Sept. 19 / Trend A.Badalova /
Italian Hera Trading, a Hera Group company, dedicated to the wholesale of gas and electricity, signed on Thursday an agreement for the purchase of gas within the second stage of Azerbaijani "Shah Deniz" field development, Italian company reported on its official website.
The agreement, signed with Shah Deniz Consortium, is for 25 years and includes the allocation, in the initial stage, of an annual volume of 300 million cubic meters. The first gas supplies are expected not before 2019.
Gas to be produced within the Shah Deniz-2 project is the main source for the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which in June was selected as a route for transportation of Azerbaijani gas to European markets.
The TAP project is designed to transport gas from Caspian region through Greece, Albania and Adriatic Sea to the South of Italy, and then to the Western Europe. The initial capacity of TAP will amount to 10 billion cubic metres per annum with the possibility of expanding to 20 billion cubic metres per annum.
Currently TAP's shareholders include BP (20 percent), SOCAR (20 percent), Statoil (20 percent), Fluxys (16 percent), Total (10 percent), E.ON (9 percent) and Axpo (5 percent). The construction of TAP is planned to start in 2015.
The reserves of the Shah Deniz field are estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas.
The first gas within Shah Deniz-2 project is planned to be obtained by 2018.