Tanap On Course, Loans Pouring in: Socar
Despite the low oil price and the need for foreign loans, the development of Trans Anatolian pipeline (Tanap) continues to follow the projected schedule, Vagif Aliev, head of Socar's investments department, told NGE.
Some $2.13bn of credit is expected to be allocated by the World Bank as well as the European Investment Bank to the project in coming months.
The funding will be used by Turkey’s pipeline monopoly Botas, which holds 30% interest in Tanap and will itself invest $780mn in the project.
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The total cost of the 1800-km line is expected to stand at $8.4bn. The project, part of the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC), aims to deliver initially 16bn m3/yr of Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz-2 (SD2) gas to Turkey and Europe by 2021. The total cost of the project, including the development of SD2, is about $45bn.
Azerbaijan's state-owned Southern Gas Corridor Company (SGCC) has already sold $1bn-worth of bonds to finance the SGC, including Tanap, of which Azerbaijan has 58% share.
Aliev, a director of Tanap, added that there is no financial obstacle to developing the project.
Azerbaijan's share in the SGC project is around $14bn, half of which will be borrowed from international financial institutions and commercial banks, the deputy head of Socar’s investment division Zaur Gahramanov said earlier.
Aliev said that the length of produced pipes for Tanap stood at 1088 km as of April 25, of which 893 km are positioned on the route from the Georgia-Turkey border to Eskishekhir. He added that about 475 km of these pipes were welded, and of those, 20 km had been laid in the trench.
Ilham Shaban