Azernews.Az

BAKU – The Azeri, Georgian and Romanian presidents will hold trilateral talks on gas supplies to Romania via Georgia in Baku on September 14, the Azerbaijan Ministry of Industry and Energy said.

President Ilham Aliyev will meet with his Georgian and Romanian counterparts, Mikheil Saakashvili and Traian Basescu, to mull the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romania Interconnector pipeline project.

Also, the energy ministers of the three countries will hold a meeting on September 13.

The parties are expected to sign a Baku declaration upon the completion of the summit.

The trilateral working group will meet in Baku on September 6 to prepare all needed documents. The working group was set up earlier within the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romania Interconnection project to establish the joint venture.

The Baku summit will be attended by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and EU Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger.

Romania, Georgia and Azerbaijan signed a deal in Bucharest in April for transporting compressed gas through the Interconnection project, also known as AGRI. The project envisions building a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal over two to three years in Georgia and simultaneously another such terminal in the Romanian port of Constanta. Azeri natural gas will be supplied by a pipeline to Georgia’s Black Sea coasts, for its further deliveries by vessels to Romania, which will be used both for domestic consumption and for further exports to European markets. The project's capacity is expected to be 7 billion cubic meters of gas a year, of which Romania is expected to receive 2 billion cubic meters annually. According to preliminary estimates, the project will cost 4-6 billion euros.

In the future, pipelines are planned to be built from Constanta to Bulgaria and Hungary to export Azeri gas to the EU member states.