Azernews.Az

The European Union is seeking an ambitious and long-term solution to the Southern Gas Corridor of pipelines and wants to see a unified transportation framework for the shipping of gas to be produced during the second stage of developing Azerbaijan’s offshore Shah Deniz field, of other prospective Azerbaijani gas and eventually Turkmen gas, says head of the EU delegation to Azerbaijan Roland Kobia.

Kobia said at a press conference in Baku on Tuesday that for the EU it is crucial that the infrastructure option chosen for the transportation of the Shah Deniz-2 gas be scalable.

"The scalability must be guaranteed to be certain that the infrastructure chosen can easily be upgraded technically and legally, so that it can automatically accommodate new volumes as new gas becomes available," he said.

Kobia said it is important that the decision taken now leave the door open not only for the future Azerbaijani gas, but also for the Turkmen gas and possibly other gas coming from the region.

He said the EU is observing with great interest the latest developments around the new pipeline proposal, apparently referring to the South-East Europe Pipeline (SEEP), a route proposed by oil giant BP.

"However, the work needed to translate these ideas and concepts into a mature project should neither delay nor undermine the Shah Deniz-2 gas delivery schedule," Kobia underlined.

Earlier this month the Shah Deniz consortium excluded Interconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy (ITGI) from the list of projects being considered to export Azerbaijani gas to European markets, and made Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) a priority route for export of Azerbaijani gas to Italy.

Besides TAP, the Nabucco pipeline and SEEP are being considered to export Shah Deniz gas.

Azerbaijan plans to export 10 billion cubic meters of gas per year to Europe during Phase 2 of Shah Deniz development.

Shah Deniz reserves are estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas.

The contract to develop the Shah Deniz field was signed in 1996. Parties to the agreement are: BP (operator) - 25.5 percent, Statoil - 25.5 percent, NICO - 10 percent, Total - 10 percent, LukAgip - 10 percent, TPAO - nine percent and Azerbaijan’s state energy firm Socar - 10 percent.