Azernews.Az

Azerbaijan is exporting billions of cubic meters of natural gas to five countries, including neighboring Turkey and Georgia, state energy firm SOCAR’s Vice President Elshad Nasirov has said.

Nasirov said 6.6bn cubic meters of gas per year are exported to Turkey, while 1.5bn cubic meters - to Georgia, Azerbaijan’s neighbor in the South Caucasus region. 400 million cubic meters go to Iran, while 750 million cubic meters - to Greece. Azerbaijan is selling its gas to Russia as well.

"Just like the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline [pumping Azerbaijani oil to world markets through Georgia and Turkey], we have to select the most optimal route for Azerbaijani gas exports to Europe," Nasirov said. "This involves gas produced not only from Shahdaniz [giant gas field in the Caspian Sea], but also other fields."

On the recently signed Azerbaijani-Turkish energy agreement, the SOCAR official said Turkey will buy 6.6 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year from Azerbaijan. As for the transit deal, which was also signed by the two countries, the South Caucasus republic is to ship 10 bcm to European customers via Turkey.

Azerbaijani gas will be supplied to Turkey and European nations during the second phase of developing the Shahdaniz gas field, which begins in 2017. The two agreements on the gas exports were part of the package of Turkish-Azerbaijani energy deals, which were signed early last week in Izmir.

Nasirov said there are three options to export Azerbaijani gas via Turkey - upgrade of the existing infrastructure, the Nabucco pipeline and construction of a new gas pipeline in Turkey.