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New export variant offered for transportation of Azerbaijanâ€™s gas to Europe

26 September 2011 11:20 (UTC +04:00)

This route will pass through Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Croatia, said the source in BP head office: â€œWe have conducted several engineering project works on this variant and believe that, these countries, as well Romania and Bulgaria have markets on gas saleâ€.

Note that, three variants are being looked through for transportation of Azerbaijani gas to Europe. These are Nabucco, TAP and ITGI projects. The representatives of these projects must submit the proposals on gas transportation to the shareholders of Shahdeniz â€“ SOCAR, until October 1. But according to source, the information on the fourth variant will be considered during the assessment process of the proposals.

According to this variant, Turkeyâ€™s area, its pipelines will be used in the gas transportation. After Turkey, transportation directions will be changed.
This new project has three advantages: â€œFirst - this project id cheap.
Second â€“ European Commission supports the diversification gas sources in the same area. Third â€“ Azerbaijan is also interested in this variant. Because Azerbaijan will sell its gas and those countries will purchase the gasâ€.

Source noted that, the reason of the discussion of this variant is to find cheaper variant. Note that, itâ€™s planned to transport 10 bcm of gas within the Shahdeniz â€“ 2. Shahdeniz 2 project is very expensive â€“ approximately $20 bln. The fourth variant will be cheaper than other and the economic performances of sale of 10 bcm of gas to Europe may be attractive for us.
Expert says, two issues on this project must be balanced. First â€“ the project must be cheap to get good economic performances. Second â€“ the pipeline must has increasing opportunity for the transportation capacity: â€œWe need the pipeline with transportation capacity of 10 bcm of gas per year. Then we intend to increase it to 20-30 bcmâ€.

There is not more information about technical-economic indicators of the project, yet. Length of pipeline will not be over 1000 km.

Note that, the companies of Shahdeniz consortium can construct this pipeline: â€œWe donâ€™t exclude this, as BP Company. If we should be offered, weâ€™d like it. Weâ€™ve experience in this sphereâ€.