Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 20
By Ali Mustafayev – Trend:
AGRI project has the potential of becoming an important instrument for ensuring EU energy security in the long term, and the project is moving forward.
Romania, Azerbaijan and Georgia work on the development of AGRI LNG project, in order to complete the assessment stage and start the implementation process, Deputy Minister of Energy of Romania Iulian Tudorache told Trend.
"The Romanian side has completed the feasibility study and we are currently in the process of jointly assessing, together with our partners, the opportunity of transforming the Project Company into a Company of Development of the Project," said Tudorache.
He added that the AGRI (Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romania Interconnector) LNG (liquefied natural gas), which Romania currently develops with the Azerbaijani partners is of high importance in terms of energy cooperation and security of gas supplies between the Caspian region and Europe.
AGRI project envisages 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 Romanian gas infrastructure for meeting the demands of Romania and other European countries.
The project is the first of its kind to be developed in the Black Sea, aiming the transport of natural gas from Caspian region to Europe. In 2017, the cost of the project was estimated to be between 1.2 billion euros to 4.5 billion euros.
The participants of the AGRI project are 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.
According to the AGRI project's official website, the forecasts say that at the EU level there will be a growing dependence on imported natural gas from 57% currently to 84% in 2030. Considering this, AGRI LNG project is gaining more and more value as another energy diversification route.