Azernews.Az

Azerbaijan’s state energy firm SOCAR could supply natural gas to Europe from the fields it is operating sooner than gas from the country’s giant Shahdaniz field being developed by an international consortium reaches European markets, an adviser to the SOCAR head says.

Murad Heydarov said SOCAR’s gas could be delivered before the second stage of developing the Shahdaniz gas field in the Caspian Sea, which begins in 2017.

"If there are ample capacities for transportation, SOCAR will be able to supply gas to Europe before 2017, though in small volumes," Heydarov said.

He noted that a number of countries in southeastern Europe, including Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Serbia, are interested in buying Azerbaijani gas to ensure their energy security.

The SOCAR adviser said Bulgaria could be "the first real buyer" of gas, given that Azerbaijan has already signed a memorandum on supplying 1 billion cubic meters of gas per year to Bulgaria.

"We are now discussing the issue with the Bulgarians. Afterwards, it will be Romania’s turn, while the other countries could be interested in this [gas supplies] hypothetically," Heydarov said.

According to him, the timeframe for launching gas transportation has not yet been determined.

"This depends on technical issues, particularly, the readiness of the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline to export additional volumes of gas," Heydarov said.

The BTE pipeline, which stretches from Azerbaijan to Turkey through Georgia, currently exports Shahdaniz gas produced during the first stage of the project.

Heydarov also noted that the Umid and Absheron gas fields have been discovered in Azerbaijan over the past year, and exploration work is being carried out there on account of SOCAR.

The Umid field holds over 200 billion cubic meters of gas and up to 40 million tons of associated condensates. Given the current gas prices in world markets, Umid’s reserves are estimated at a total of $30-40 billion.

The Absheron structure in Azerbaijan's sector of the Caspian Sea holds 350 billion cubic meters of gas and 45 million tons of condensate.

Azerbaijan’s proven gas reserves amount to 2.55 trillion cubic meters.

Most of the resource-rich South Caucasus republic’s gas is produced from the Shahdaniz field, which launched production in 2006. Shahdaniz shareholders are: BP (25.5 percent), Statoil (25.5 percent), NICO (10 percent), Total (10 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), TPAO (9 percent) and SOCAR (10 percent).