Azerbaijan guarantees that it will provide the territory, transit opportunities and infrastructure for realization of the Trans-Caspian project, Tofig Gakhramanov, President for Strategic Development of SOCAR (State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic), said in Ashkhabad on Thursday, Trend reports.
Azerbaijani and Turkmen positions have a lot in common – diversification, multi-polarity of export opportunities, Gakhramanov says. He noted that there had been a lot of discussions on pipelines connecting Turkmenistan with gas supplies in Russia, China. The TAPI project (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) is an interesting one together with the Southern Corridor through the Caspian Sea, the official says.
The Trans-Caspian gas pipeline will be part of the Southern Gas Corridor to deliver energy resources of the Caspian Sea to European markets. The pipeline will run underneath the Caspian Sea from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan. It will be 300 km long. Turkmenistan will provide the fuel for the project.
The Southern Gas Corridor is a priority energy project for the European Union. It is to diversify routes and sources of energy resources and contribute to European energy security. The Southern Gas Corridor includes such projects as Nabucco, the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), ITGI.
Turkmenistan may become a key supplier of gas for the corridor.
Ashkhabad started construction of 1000 km of interior gas pipelines “East-West” worth $2 billion. It is to form a single network of the Yelotensky and nearby fields with the Caspian coast, where a 300-km pipeline will start its way to Azerbaijan and Turkey.
