Azerbaijan and Turkey sign gas agreement

 Azerbaijan and Turkey have signed an agreement on gas today in Istanbul. The document was signed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey, Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, Natik Aliyev, the minister of energy and industry of Azerbaijan, and Taner Yıldız, the natural resources minister of Turkey. The questions dealt with in the declaration are gas transit through the territory of Turkey and the price of developing the "Shah Deniz" gas field, Trend reports. The state gas companies of the particiant countries (GNKAR and Botas) also signed the documents. Rovnag Abdullayev, the president of the Azeri state company GNKAR, said: "One more step has been made in the direction of the energy cooperation between our companies and our brotherly nations. The agreements signed today will permit the realization of new large-scale projects which can be compared with the already realized projects of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzrum gas pipeline ". The agreement entails a price change for Turkey in the framework of the first and second stages of development of the "Shah Deniz" gas field, and a price change for transit of Azeri gas through Turkish territory. The contract on the development of "Shah Deniz" was signed on June 4th 1996. The participants are: BP (25.5%), Statoil (25.5%), NICO (10%), Total (10%), LUKOIL (10%), TPAO (9%), GNKAR (10%). The resources of "Shah Deniz" amount to 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas.