Baku, Azerbaijan, June 24
By Azad Hasanli - Trend:
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Romania signed on June 24 a joint declaration on supporting the development of the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romania Interconnector (AGRI) project, said a message from Romania's energy ministry on June 24.
AGRI is a part of the Southern Gas Corridor, which is a priority energy project for the EU. It envisages the transportation of gas from the Caspian Sea region to the European countries through Georgia and Turkey.
The document was inked during an inter-ministerial meeting in Bucharest, Romania by the ministers of energy of Azerbaijan and Romania, Natig Aliyev and Andrei Dominic Gerea, and Georgia's deputy energy minister, Mariam Valishvili.
AGRI project envisages the transportation of Azerbaijani gas to the Black Sea coast of Georgia via gas pipelines. Azerbaijani gas delivered to Georgia's Black Sea coast will be liquefied at a special terminal and following this, it will be delivered in tankers to a terminal at the Romanian port of Constanta.
Further, it will be brought to the gaseous state and sent via the country's gas infrastructure for meeting the demands of Romania and other European countries.
The cost of the project will vary from 1.2 billion euros to 4.5 billion euros, according to the preliminary estimations. The project's cost will depend on the capacity of terminals that can be equal to 2-8 billion cubic meters of gas per year.
The participants of the AGRI project are the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), Georgia's Oil and Gas Corporation, as well as MVM (Hungary) and Romgaz (Romania).
The parties established the SC AGRI LNG Project Company SRL in February 2011 for the implementation of the project.
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