The Azerbaijani-Turkish Trans-Anatolia Gas Pipeline (TANAP) may become an alternative to Nabucco, Statoil Azerbaijan President Lars Sorensen said, Trend reports.
Statoil is a partner of the consortium for development of the Shah Deniz Gas Field with 25.5% of shares. The contract on Shah Deniz development was signed on June 4, 1996. Other shareholders of the project are BP (operator) – 25.5%, NICO - 10%, Total - 10%, LUKAgip - 10%, TPAO - 9% and SOCAR - 10%.
Azerbaijan and Turkey signed a memorandum of understanding to form the consortium and build a pipeline to transport gas from Shah Deniz to Europe through Turkey. BOTAS has 20% of shares in the TANAP project, SOCAR (Azerbaijan) has 80%.
The pipeline will transport 16 billion cubic meters annually. 6 billion of them will go to Turkey, the rest to Europe. Azerbaijan is currently exporting gas to Turkey through the South Caucasus Gas Pipeline.
Realization of Shah Deniz-2 will require expansion of the South Caucasus Pipeline from 9 to 25 billion cubic meters annually. The capacity may reach 60 billion cubic meters if Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan find additional gas supplies.
The final decision on Shah Deniz-2 will be made in mid-2013.
The head of the OMV Gas Department, Hans Peter-Floren, said that construction of Nabucco may start in 2015, 1news.az reports. It may be launched in 2018.
The Nabucco project has experienced many postponements. Hungary’s MOL said last month that it wants to sell its share. OMV Executive Director Gerhardt Royss said that a pipeline from the Black Sea is necessary.
OMV said in February that it had found large gas reserves on the Romanian shelf of the Black Sea together with ExxonMobil. The project may be realized using the Nabucco-West project to build a pipeline from the Turkish-Bulgarian border. The Shah Deniz Consortium continues studying the SEEP project. The Trans-Adriatic Pipeline project to connect Greece and Italy through Albania and the Adriatic Sea is another alternative.
A final decision is expected in mid-2013.
