Azerbaijan plays important role in Europe's energy security

/By AzerNews/

By Aynur Karimova

Azerbaijan plays an important role in ensuring Europe’s energy security, according to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who addressed the Atlantic Council Energy and Economic Summit on November 19, Turkish media reported.

He said that while Europe was planning to construct the Nabucco pipeline, Azerbaijan and Turkey started to implement the Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline project.

The Turkish president also added that, currently, the construction of TANAP pipeline continues in Turkey.

"Work is underway to attract gas from Turkmenistan and other alternative sources for transporting via TANAP," he noted.

TANAP envisages the transportation of gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz field on the Georgian-Turkish border to the western borders of Turkey. TANAP’s initial capacity is expected to reach 16 billion cubic meters of gas per year. Some six billion cubic meters of this gas will be delivered to Turkey and the rest will go to Europe.

BP and the TANAP consortium signed on March 13 a shareholder agreement, according to which, BP will become one of the shareholders of TANAP. The agreement is one of the main documents proclaiming BP’s ownership of a stake in the TANAP project.

Following the completion of a legal implementation procedure, TANAP’s shareholder list will be as follows: SOCAR, 58 percent; Botas, 30 percent; and BP, 12 percent.

The capital costs of the TANAP project are expected to stand at $9.5 billion.