Azerbaijan, Baku / Trend corr. K.Ramazanova / The grant agreement on the study cost and material of construction of the TransCaspian oil and gas pipeline was signed in Baku on 16 August.
The agreement was signed between the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) and the Trade and Development Agency of the US, The budget of the agreement is $1.7mln.
One of the pipelines will transport oil from Kazakhstan via Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, and the other for export of gas from Kazakhstan and other countries of Central Asia to Europe and the world market, said James Vilrotter, the representative of the USTDA leadership.
Experts from the US and Azerbaijan will meet for the technical study of the two new pipelines. The tender for defining the company will be held by SOCAR.
Earlier, the consortium of the company of MottMcDonald Ltd ( Great Britain), Kantor Management Consultants ( Greece), KLC Law Firm ( Greece) and ASPI Consulting Engineers ( Azerbaijan) already developed the preliminary technical-economic substantiation on transporting gas from Turkmenistan to Europe within the project of INOGATE.
A higher priority route for gas transporting is via the Caspian Sea through a seabed gas pipeline.
The preliminary fee of the construction of the under-water gas pipeline is $11.5bln. The transporting capacity by 22 bln cu m of gas per year. In 1990 the cost for implementation of the project was $3bln.
This pipeline may be joined with the South Caucasus gas pipeline, which presently transports gas from the Azerbaijani gas field of Shah Daniz to Turkey via Georgia. It is planned to transport the gas via Greece and Bulgaria to Italy in the future.