Updated: Statoil to Depart Trans Adriatic Pipeline

Norway's Statoil is to leave Trans Adriatic Pipeline project (TAP) by selling its shareholding.

The news was delivered by Rovnag Abdullayev, President of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) during an exclusive interview to Azeri ANS TV today.

Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev said during a visit to Milan's EXPO international trade fair on July 9th that Baku was open to Italian gas infrastructure group Snam to take a stake in the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).

In responding to the reporters’ question about the possibility of Snam’s investment in TAP, Aliyev commented "Why not? If someone would allocate its shares to other companies I don't see any problems".

Earlier this week, Snam’s CEO Carlo Malacarne confirmed that there were TAP stakeholders willing to sell their shares to the Italian company.

However, Abdullayev said that “it is our interest that two or more companies purchase Statoil’s stake in TAP. “Several companies have announced their willingness so far, including Greeks”.

In respect to Greek companies, the SOCAR head added: “Of course, the (economic) situation of Greek government is not good, but it doesn’t mean that the same situation is ruling in their companies, therefore we will not ignore any request from Greece.

TAP's current shareholding is BP (20 percent), the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) (20 percent), Norway's Statoil (20 percent), Belgium's Fluxys (19 percent), Spain's Enagas (16 percent) and Swiss company Axpo (5 percent).

Statoil has sold its shares in Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz gas field as well as the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) to SOCAR, BP and Petronas in early May, 2015.

Southern Gas Corridor, consisting of SCP, Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) and TAP, is projected to transit 16 billion cubic meters per annum of Shah Deniz’s gas to Turkey and Europe by 2020 in first phase.