BP to Enter Southern Corridor Pipeline Fray

Cat Amongst the Pigeons?

Throwing a twist into the already muddled world of Caspian gas pipelines, BP plc. has announced its plans to build a pipeline to bring gas from Azerbaijan to European markets.

The 800 mile link dubbed “South East Europe Pipeline” would travel across Turkey and run across Bulgaria and Romania to eastern Hungary, using existing infrastructure to link to Azerbaijan in the east and with the gas hub Austria in the west.

BP is a key player in the Shah Deniz II gas field project.  Its entry into the pipeline fray would now see the existing pipeline projects, the EU backed Nabucco pipeline project, the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline and Interconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy, seeking to win the approval of the very same Shah Deniz producers who would now be transit competitors.

BP’s plan would see a pipeline that would be geared in capacity (and therefore less costly to build) to the 10bn cu m of gas that will be available from Shah Deniz commencing in 2017.

The Shah Deniz II stakeholders are BP (field operator - 25.5%), Statoil (25.5%), SOCAR (10%), Lukoil (10%), NICO (10%), Total (10%), and TPAO (9%).