Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 21
By Elchin Mehdiyev and Aygun Badalova - Trend:
The United Kingdom considers Caspian gas as important for European energy security, UK Prime Minister's Trade Envoy to Azerbaijan, Charles Hendry said at a press conference on November 21.
"It is important to deliver gas from the Caspian region to the European market," Hendry said.
He also stressed that the UK have fully supported the decision of selection of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) as the route to transport gas to the Europe.
Talking about the perspective of the Trans Caspian pipeline project's implementation, Hendry said that "it is something that I believe will happen eventually".
"If the delivery of Turkmen gas though Azerbaijan to the European market via the pipeline becomes real, we will obviously support this," Hendry said adding that the EU strongly supports this project.
He also stressed that this issue will be the bilateral process between the government of Azerbaijan and government of Turkmenistan.
"We would like to see it happen. It would be good for European energy security if that pipeline was built," Hendry added.
The Trans-Caspian gas pipeline is planned to be laid from the Turkmen coast of the Caspian Sea to the Azerbaijani coast. The pipeline's length will hit about 300 kilometers.
Negotiations on the construction of the pipeline between Turkmenistan, the EU and other countries have been held since late 1990s.
The negotiation process has been intensified after the European Union delivered a mandate to start negotiations on the preparation of an agreement between the EU, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan on the Trans-Caspian project in September 2011. However, Iran and Russia later expressed their negative attitude towards the project. Tehran and Moscow believe that the construction of this pipeline may damage the ecology of the Caspian Sea.