Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
The remaining section of the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) will be linefilled till June 12, head of TANAP consortium Saltuk Duzyol said in an exclusive interview with Trend.
“As you may recall, we held our inauguration ceremony last year for Phase 0. We started delivering gas to Turkey commercially in June 2018. Till now, we have delivered approximately 2.5 billion cubic meters of gas to Turkey, to Turkish customers. Phase 1, the section, which we construct for delivering gas to Europe, was also mechanically completed by 2018. Starting from April 15 of this year, we started line filling the section which is required to deliver gas to Europe. As of today, only 85 kilometers of TANAP are left without line filling. I think we will linefill this remaining section till June 12 of this year and we will be completely ready for commercial gas deliveries to Europe by July 1 of this year,” he said.
Duzyol pointed out that for the moment, 99.7 percent of the project is complete.
“The whole pipeline has already been tested. It is up and running, except for the remaining 85 kilometers, which is also mechanically complete, only waiting for hot commissioning with gas. Hopefully, we will be ready by July 1 and we’ll start commercial deliveries to Europe after the completion of TAP. When I talk about the pipeline, I mean the whole system, including surface facilities, compressor stations, metering stations, pig stations and block valve stations. It is a huge project,” said the consortium head.
He pointed out that the offshore section is also complete and linefilled.
“According to the project schedule, our plan was to complete everything by July 1 of this year,” Duzyol explained.
The TANAP pipeline runs from the Georgian-Turkish border to the country’s western border with Greece. TANAP, together with the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), is part of the Southern Gas Corridor project, which provides the transportation of gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz field to Europe.
The initial capacity of the TANAP pipeline is expected to be 16 billion cubic meters of gas per year. About 6 billion cubic meters will be supplied to Turkey, while the rest will be supplied to Europe. After the completion of the construction of TAP, gas flow to Europe will being by early 2020.
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