As South Stream implementation has been cancelled, European Uni9on would like to increase carrying capacity of trans-Anadolu (TANAP) gas pipeline for Europe up to 20 billion cub.m.
Spiegel magazine writes that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Taner Yildiz and new European Energy Commissar Marosh Shefchovich reached this agreement a week ago.
“There are technical preconditions for increase in the pipeline capacity,” said Shefchovich. He said that all participants of the talks agreed that construction of the gas pipeline will be completed by 2019.
During his state visit to Turkey on December 1, 2014 Russian President Vladimir Putin said that in the current situation Russia cannot continue implementation of the project, because of the European Union’s unconstructive position. Russia is going to build a new gas pipeline to satisfy Turkey’s needs in gas. Later on Gasprom President Aleksei Miller has confirmed that the South Stream project has been closed.
However, several issues are still unclear: it is not enough to expand capacity of TANAP, capacity of the Southern Caucasian gas pipeline must be expanded as well. This will require additional costs. Secondly, how will Azerbaijan be able to have free 4 billion cub.m. of gas for export by 2019?
The Umid field is ruled out, because SOCAR has invited tender for the exploration works on the field jointly with Babak field. The exploration works will be carried out here in 2017-2018 at best and if they are successful, the contractor will drill another evaluation well and only after that it will submit SOCAR the plan for development of the “contract area.” About 4-5 years are usually needed for development after the field discovery. The Absheron gas field could be development in quarter 4, 2021 at best.
The European Union could keep dreaming about implementation of the trans-Caspian gas pipeline project within a short period of time and development of gas fields of Azerbaijan. But in practice this usually depends on two factors – commercial interests of the companies and support of the projects by the governments.
