SOCAR to Invest $17 Billion in Turkey

The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR)'s Turkish branch, SOCAR Energy Turkey, will invest $17 billion in Turkish oil and gas projects by 2018, its CEO has said.

Speaking to Turkish reporters, CEO Kenan Yavuz said that the investment, which will included projects such as the Trans-Anatolian pipeline and the South Caucasus Pipeline, also known as the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (BTE) gas pipeline, would be the largest private investment in Turkey's history.

The investment will further a strong working relationship between the two countries. Currently, Turkey is the largest importer of Azeri gas, Mr. Yavuz said.

However, the CEO also said that an investment in the country's gas distributor, Başkent Doğalgaz, was not on the cards at the moment.He said that SOCAR might be interested in an investment should a share in Turkey's other distributor IGDAS became available but that at the moment, it would not be considering a stake in Başkent.