Tension near occupied Nagorno-Karabakh not to disrupt TAP project
By Ayya Lmahamad
Escalation of tension between Armenia and Azerbaijan will not affect the plans to export Azerbaijani gas via Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), TAP’s executive director Luca Schieppati said addressing the Italian Energy Summit 2020 recently.
“Currently, tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh region do not pose any risk to natural gas supplies to TAP. Because the corridor is far from the most critical area,” Schieppati said.
Azerbaijan will start transportation of natural gas to Italy via Trans Adriatic pipeline by late 2020.
Nearly 98 percent of the work has been completed on the TAP gas pipeline project, through which Azerbaijani gas will be supplied to Europe, including engineering, procurement and construction, TAP’s executive director Luca Schieppati said addressing the Italian Energy Summit 2020 recently.
Thus, by the end of the year, it will be possible to transport natural gas via pipeline and open the Southern Gas Corridor.
Earlier it was reported that test shipment of Azerbaijani natural gas from Shah Deniz-2 gas condensate field to Europe via Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline has started.
The Southern Gas Corridor is an initiative of the European Commission for a natural gas supply route from Caspian and Middle Eastern regions to Europe. The route from Azerbaijan to Europe consist of the South Caucasus Pipeline, the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline, and the Trans- Adriatic Pipeline.
Trans Adriatic Pipeline is a pipeline project to transport natural gas, starting from Greece via Albania and the Adriatic Sea to Italy and further to Western Europe.
The pipeline would be supplied by natural gas from the second stage of the Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz gas field development in the Azerbaijani section of Caspian SEA through the South Caucasus Pipeline and the Trans Anatolian Pipeline.
The total length of the pipeline will be 878 kilometres, of which 550 kilometres in Greece, 215 kilometres in Albania, 105 kilometres in offshore, and 8 kilometres in Italy. The offshore part will be laid at a maximum depth of 810 metres.
The initial capacity of the pipeline will be about 10 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year, with the option to expand the capacity up to 20 billion cubic metres.
There have been severe clashes on the line of contact between the Armenian and Azerbaijani troops since September 27, after Armenia launched attacks along the line of contact. 19 Azerbaijani civilians have been killed in the attacks.
Azerbaijan and Armenia are locked in a conflict over Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh breakaway region, which along with seven adjacent regions was occupied by Armenian forces in a war in the early 1990s. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and around one million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.
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