Turkey, Azerbaijan sign long-awaited gas transit deal
Turkey and Azerbaijan on Tuesday signed a transit deal to ship Azerbaijani natural gas to Europe, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told a joint news conference with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in the Turkish city of Izmir.
Azerbaijan said in September it would complete gas transit talks with Turkey to transport gas from Shahdaniz, Azerbaijan’s largest gas field in the Caspian Sea, to European markets by September 26 and sign a final deal in October, giving a potential boost to the European Union's Nabucco pipeline plans.
Details on the accord were not available, but Azerbaijan was negotiating to sell Ankara 6 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year from the second phase of the Shahdaniz field, which begins in 2017, and to ship 10 bcm to European customers via Turkey.
Turkey and Azerbaijan also signed on Tuesday agreements on the cost of Azerbaijani gas to be supplied to Turkey during Phase 2 of Shahdaniz development, and the volume of gas deliveries to the neighboring country after 2017, TRT TV channel reported.
The Shahdaniz field holds estimated reserves of 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas.
Shahdaniz shareholders are: BP (25.5 percent), Statoil (25.5 percent), NICO (10 percent), Total (10 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), TPAO (9 percent) and Azerbaijan’s state energy firm SOCAR (10 percent).
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