Rusarminfo Российско-Армянское информационное агентство
Turkey and Azerbaijan have agreed to accelerate the construction of the Trans-Anatolian pipeline TANAP, completing it ahead of time (up to 2018 — ed), this was announced a day before by Prime Minister of Turkey Ahmet Davutoglu after the meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
TANAP pipeline will allow Turkey to increase purchases of Azerbaijani gas to six billion cubic meters per year, and will allow Baku to export to Europe about 10 billion cubic meters of gas per year. In Europe, the gas gets through the TAP gas pipeline connected to TANAP. The gas will be supplied from the Azerbaijani «Shah Deniz» field.
Turkey is in a hurry, but the question is whether the resource base for deliveries on the pipeline will be ready by that time, — says Alexey Grivach, deputy of the general director on gas issues, the National Energy Security Fund of Russia.
«I strongly doubt that it will be ready (resource base — ed.). Turkey has begun to accelerate the whole process because of the very complicated relations with Russia. Turkey is trying to show that they do not need the Russian gas, and they have alternatives. But still Russia and Turkey have long-term contracts with each other, which are still valid and bind the two countries,» mentions Alexey Grivach in his interview to RUSARMINFO.
Note: Turkey is completely dependent on imports of gas, 56% of its consumption is provided by «Gazprom» (27.4 billion cubic meters in 2014). Also, the gas suppliers are Azerbaijan (5.3 billion cubic meters) and Iran (8.9 billion cubic meters). The demand for gas in Turkey, despite a slight slowdown after the crisis of 2009, is growing at about 3% a year, and now the country is the largest market for «Gazprom» after Germany.
From 2007 to May 1, 2015 the Azerbaijani «Shah Deniz» field, according to the SOCAR state company, produced 61 billion cubic meters of gas. Over the same period, 33 billion cubic meters were exported to Turkey and 4.5 billion cubic meters to Georgia.
