Hurriyet: The big energy game in the Mediterranean
This will be the first big project to pump Caspian basin gas directly to the industrial centers of Europe, bypassing the need for shipment and expensive liquidification stations. The 1,730-kilometer TANAP is planned to carry Azeri gas across Turkey to the border with Greece. Set to be coupled with the already-existing InterConnector line to the 870-kilometer long TAP, it will be carried (crossing Albania, too) to the San Foca terminal of Adriatic Italy. For a start, by 2020 some 16 billion cubic meters will be pumped from Baku. Turkey is planning to buy 10 bcm of it to diversify its sources of energy, as an alternative to Russian gas. The capacity of the line is expected to rise gradually to 31 bcm by 2026.
Azerbaijan has been making considerable energy investments in its close partner Turkey, buying oil refineries, and constructing new ones on top of an already-existing (again BP-operated) pipeline carrying oil from Baku through Tiblisi to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan; which is just next to NATO’s İncirlik Air Base that hosts one of the biggest U.S. military presences in the region.