Azernews.Az

By Sara Israfilbayova

Delivering the first gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz field to Turkey via TANAP in June 2018 is quite real, said Khoshbakht Yusifzade, the first vice-president of Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR.

Construction of the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), a pipe within the Southern Gas Corridor pipeline systems, has been completed by more than 80 percent.

In an article published in the country’s Respublika newspaper, Yusifzade noted that intensive work is also underway to build the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), adding that first gas supplies from Azerbaijan to Europe via TAP are scheduled for 2019.

TAP project, worth 4.5 billion euros, is a part of the Southern Gas Corridor, which is one of the priority energy projects for the European Union. The project envisages transportation of gas from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz Stage 2 to the EU countries.

The pipeline will connect to TANAP on the Turkish-Greek border, run through Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea, before coming ashore in Italy’s south.

TAP will be 878 kilometers in length (Greece 550 kilometers, Albania 215 kilometers, Adriatic Sea 105 kilometers, and Italy 8 kilometers).

TAP’s shareholding is comprised of BP (20 percent), SOCAR (20 percent), Snam S.p.A. (20 percent), Fluxys (19 percent), Enagás (16 percent) and Axpo (5 percent).

The article further reads that from the beginning of first oil production in November 1997 and until September 1, 2017, 435.6 million tons of oil and 136.3 billion cubic meters of associated gas were produced in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) block of oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea.

Yusifzade added that 245 million tons of the total volume of oil produced at ACG account for Azerbaijan's profitable oil.

"As of September 1, 2017, 340 million tons out of 456 million tons of oil exported by Azerbaijan to the world markets accounted for the export via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline," the article says.

A contract for development of the ACG block of oil and gas fields was signed in 1994. The proven oil reserves of the block near one billion tons. Shareholders in the project are BP (operator of the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli, 35.8 percent), Chevron (11.3 percent), Inpex (11 percent), AzACG (11.6 percent), Statoil (8.55 percent), Exxon (8 percent), TPAO (6.75 percent), Itochu (4.3 percent) and ONGC (2.7 percent).

Thirteen companies from 8 countries (Azerbaijan, U.S., Great Britain, Russia, Turkey, Norway, Japan, Saudi Arabia) have participated in signing of the "Contract of the Century".

On September 14 the country signed a landmark agreement with BP and its partners in the Azeri, Chirag fields and the Deep Water Portion of the Gunashli Field (ACG), embodying celebration of a “Contract of the 21st Century”.

The current amended and restated agreement on the joint development and production sharing will be effective until the end of 2049 and here is the potential for more than $40 billion capital to be invested in the ACG oil field.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz