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Azerbaijan extends helping hand to Georgia

14 January 2016 15:13 (UTC+04:00)
Azerbaijan extends helping hand to Georgia

By Aynur Karimova

Azerbaijan has once again rescued Georgia from shortage of natural gas and energy dependence on the Russian "gas needle".

After a series of negotiations with Russia on increasing gas supplies for meeting its growing needs, Georgia, finally, again appealed to Azerbaijan, its main partner and supplier of energy resources.

On January 13, Rovnag Abdullayev, the Head of Azerbaijan's state energy giant SOCAR, held a meeting with representatives of the Georgian government in Tbilisi.

The technical issues were high on the agenda of the meeting. In particular, the sides discussed the current state of operating pipelines and opportunities to increase the supply of Azerbaijani blue fuel to Georgia to meet the growing demand of the country.

Mahir Mammadov, the head of SOCAR Energy Georgia, has revealed the volume of gas which was agreed to be supplied to Georgia.

He told Georgian media that SOCAR is looking for the ways to increase the volume of gas supplied to Georgia and the company will maximally increase the gas supply up to seven million cubic meters per day.

"We discussed the gas supply in winter and the technical means to cover the shortage of gas as gas consumption is rather increasing in winter,” Mammadov said. “We will maximally increase the supply of gas up to seven million a day."

Daily gas consumption in Georgia exceeded 11 million cubic meters per day and about 2.5 billion cubic meters per year. Currently, SOCAR supplies six million cubic meters per day and it is impossible to get more via the existing pipeline.

Annual growth of the market is up to 10 percent or maximum 250 million cubic meters per year. With such a growth rate, gas consumption in the country will reach five billion cubic meters in the next 10 years.

No doubt that this amount is not beyond the power of Azerbaijan, which enjoys huge gas resources.

Currently, Azerbaijan supplies gas to Georgia via Hajigabul-Gardabani pipeline the capacity of gas pumping through which reaches 6.5 million cubic meters per day. The second way carrying gas to Georgian consumers is the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (South Caucasus) Pipeline, through which the gas from the first stage of the Shah Deniz field is supplied to Georgia and a large proportion goes through its territory to Turkey.

By increasing the capacity of these pipelines, SOCAR will be able to meet the increasing demand of Georgia in energy.

The company has several plans in this regard. In particular, in November last year SOCAR head Rovnag Abdullayev said that the company will fully upgrade the Hajigabul-Gardabani pipeline to increase its capacity.

Also, works on the expansion of the South Caucasus Pipeline as part of the Shah Deniz-2 project have already commenced. These works include the construction of a new pipeline in the territory of Azerbaijan and two new gas compressor stations in Georgia. Expansion of the South Caucasus Pipeline will triple its capacity to more than 20 billion cubic meters a year. That will allow allocating more gas to Georgia.

Underground gas storage

Another important issue, which was discussed by SOCAR and Georgia, was the construction of underground gas storage facility in this country.

It was agreed that SOCAR will participate in the construction of an underground gas storage in Georgia. This storage will be able to store up to 250 million cubic meters of gas, and it will be filled almost certainly with gas from Azerbaijan.

Thus, being the main gas supplier to Georgia with a share of 77.9 percent of the total volume of gas imports of the country, Azerbaijan once again extended a helping hand to Georgia, which will receive more gas at enough low prices, upgrade its pipeline infrastructure, and build a gas storage facility with the participation of specialists of SOCAR.

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Aynur Karimova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz

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