TANAP: New energy bridge between Europe and Middle East?
By Trend
Natural resources, unfortunately, are very often the cause of military conflicts between states, and quite often some great powers use natural resources as tools of political pressure on other countries.
Azerbaijan, after gaining its independence, thanks to its foreign policy, as well as a competent energy strategy, has turned into the most dynamically developing state of the South Caucasus.
Azerbaijan has always pursued a transparent energy policy and has never used its resource potential against any country. Thanks to such policy, Azerbaijan’s energy projects have never encountered any serious obstacles.
Today Azerbaijan is participating in an important energy project – construction of the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), which has a special significance not only for Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, but also for entire Europe.
The Turkish authorities have repeatedly said that the country will become a regional energy hub thanks to the implementation of TANAP project.
TANAP stretches throughout Turkey and such countries as Iran and Iraq, and if they intend to export natural gas to Europe, they will not be able to bypass this project. They can only join.
The Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline also contributed to the development of the provinces of Turkey, through the territory of which this vital pipeline for Europe passes.
As it is known, the construction of the TANAP’s offshore section has already been completed in Turkey’s Canakkale province and, as Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Berat Albayrak said, this project will be ready in the first half of 2018.
The testing of TANAP on the Turkish-Georgian border will begin in early January 2018.
TANAP’s importance for Turkey is not only in the fact that this project will reduce Turkey’s energy dependence on Russia, Iran, Algeria and Nigeria. Currently, Turkey is 90-percent dependent on external supplies of natural gas.
As it is known, with the beginning of TANAP’s construction, the fiber-optic cable laying along the gas pipeline began in Turkey, which corresponds to the government’s “Hedef 2023” program. The program envisages the coverage of the country’s territory by a fiber optic network.
Laying the fiber optic cable will provide an alternative to the existing cable infrastructure, and companies and organizations can benefit from it.
Meanwhile, laying the fiber optic cable, carried out by SOCAR Fiber, will become an important contribution to the development of communications infrastructure of Turkey, which pays special attention to the development of this sphere.
Thus, the beginning of 2018 will be important for Azerbaijan and Turkey, as the countdown starts before the commissioning of TANAP.
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