Azernews.Az

Thursday March 28 2024

TANAP to be another stage in infrastructure upgrade of post-Soviet area

15 May 2018 16:40 (UTC+04:00)
TANAP to be another stage in infrastructure upgrade of post-Soviet area

By Trend

The commissioning of the Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline (TANAP) project will be another stage in restructuring the infrastructure of the post-Soviet area, reads an article posted on the Belarus Today portal.

"The matter is that the transport infrastructure, including the oil and gas infrastructure of the former Soviet republics was created to serve needs of a single and self-sufficient Soviet economic complex," according to the article.

"The situation changed radically following the collapse of the USSR. A number of new independent states turned out to own surplus raw materials and energy resources for their economies, and external players, primarily the EU, became interested in them. However, the Soviet infrastructure limited opportunities for supply, making these countries dependent on transit. So, the only route for Azerbaijani hydrocarbons run through the territory of Russia and the Novorossiysk port. Turkmenistan, which has the world's largest reserves of natural gas, was in a similar situation," reads the article.

In the long term, according to the article, TANAP can serve as a basis for even more ambitious transit projects that will allow to supply hydrocarbons from Iran and Central Asia through the South Caucasus.

"However, the diversification of transport corridors can hardly be interpreted exclusively in a confrontational geopolitical way. Because, very Azerbaijan, together with Russia and Iran, is implementing the North-South transport corridor project that will connect Russia with the ports of the Persian Gulf, as well as Pakistan and India. The network of transport corridors in Eurasia is becoming more branched and decentralized," the article notes.

TANAP project, worth $7.9 billion, envisages transportation of gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz field to the western borders of Turkey. The gas will be delivered to Turkey in 2018 and after completion of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline's construction natural gas will be delivered to Europe in early 2020.

The length of TANAP is 1,850 kilometers, with an initial capacity of 16 billion cubic meters of gas. Around six billion cubic meters of this gas is meant to be delivered to Turkey, with the remaining volume to be supplied to Europe.

Currently, the shareholders of TANAP are the Southern Gas Corridor CJSC (58 percent), Botas (30 percent) and BP (12 percent).

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz

Loading...
Latest See more