The first session of the Consultative Council of the Southern Gas Corridor project will take place in Baku on February 12, 2015 at Azerbaijan’s initiative, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said at the round table on energy safety entitled “Diversification Strategies” within the framework of the 51st Security Conference in Munich on February 6, 2015.
“We have invited high-ranking officials from all the countries involved in the project – Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania and Italy. Therefore, this is how our team looks like at the moment. At the next stages we will involve partners from the Balkan countries into the project. The memorandums on mutual understanding have been already signed with Croatia and Montenegro.
Thus, we need coordination and a powerful support of the European organizations to at least not to lose time for the red tape procedures. I think that the project needs to be guarded against common rules and procedures taking sometimes too much time, we need to use special approach. In the first projects we had only Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia involved and we had efficiency.
In this project we also need efficiency and the same level of trust. As TANAP, TAP and Shah Deniz 2 will require big investments, this time not only Azerbaijan, but also BP and Turkey are big investment partners here. Therefore, we need repay the investments.
“I would like to say that we are on the right track, the works are going on schedule, the construction has started, the pipes have been ordered and the contractors selected. We have committed ourselves to implement TANAP, which is the first part, till 2018 and TAP project till 2020. We need coordination between all members of the team and more support and mutual trust,” said President Ilham Aliyev.
