Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug.12
By Sara Israfilbayova - Trend:
The Turkish Stream project in the future may be connected to the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), Senior Analyst for the oil and gas sector at Russia’s Sberbank Andrei Gromadin told Trend.
He said that in the current configuration, the Turkish Stream is aimed at supplying gas to the Turkish market and to Eastern European countries including Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary.
"Cooperation with other projects (including TAP) isn’t envisaged yet, but, in our opinion, it is possible in the future, if the demand in target markets is lower than planned," said the analyst, referring to the possibility of weakening demand in Western European countries. "In the first place, these are Germany and Austria, which are the main gas sales markets for Gazprom."
TAP is conducting a market test to determine the interest of potential carriers, on the basis of which there are plans to bring the pipeline’s capacity to 20 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year.
The initial capacity of TAP is 10 billion cubic meters of gas per year, and it may increase twice.
TAP project, worth 4.5 billion euros, is one of the priority energy projects for the European Union. The project envisages transportation of gas from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz Stage 2 to the EU countries.
Connecting with the Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) at the Greek-Turkish border, TAP will cross Northern Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea before coming ashore in Southern Italy to connect to the Italian natural gas network.
The project is currently in its construction phase, which started in 2016.
Once built, TAP will offer a direct and cost-effective transportation route opening up the vital Southern Gas Corridor, a 3,500-kilometer long gas value chain stretching from the Caspian Sea to Europe.
TAP shareholders include BP (20 percent), SOCAR (20 percent), Snam S.p.A. (20 percent), Fluxys (19 percent), Enagás (16 percent) and Axpo (5 percent).
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