SOCAR President: We Will Keep Operatorship of TANAP

President of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) Rovnag Abdullayev has said that the company expects to keep operatorship of the Trans Anatolian Pipeline, even after it splits its share with other companies.

"Our main purpose is to keep operatorship and control in the pipeline," he said today in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Currently, SOCAR holds an 80 per cent stake in the pipeline (also known as TANAP), but has offered a portion of this stake to other companies. Turkish companies BOTAS and TPAO hold a ten per cent stake each.

With a portion of SOCAR's stake up for grab, Mr. Abdullayev said that consideration would first go to companies that have an existing interest in Azerbaijan.

"SOCAR's share in the project can be given only to gas companies operating in the country," ABC.az reports him as saying today. "The issue of how many and who will get TANAP shares will be solved later, after signing the intergovernmental agreement on TANAP construction between Azerbaijan and Turkey."

The president said that consideration would be given to other countries, including Ukraine which had expressed an interest in participating in the project but that preference remained with those companies already based in Azerbaijan.

A number of foreign companies already participating in gas extraction in the country had expressed an interest in the stakes, he said. These included BP, the operator of the Azeri Shah Deniz field, Statoil and Total, he said.