Turkish Part of SGC to Start in July
The commissioning ceremony for Turkey's section of the Southern Gas Corridor, the TransAnatolian gas pipeline (Tanap), will happen in July 2018, Turkey's energy minister Berat Albayrak said at a meeting of parties involved in the project in Baku February 15.
Among the delegates at the fourth such meeting were senior European Commission officials, who have backed the highly ambitious project from the outset as it offers European customers an alternative to Russian gas – particularly those in the Balkans.
Azerbaijan’s state-run oil company Socar has already told NGW that testing of the route from the second phase of the Shah Deniz gas field (SD2) in the Caspian Sea to the town of Eskisehir in western Turkey has already been started and "due to be completed entirely by March 2018 using gas from the first phase of Shah Deniz,” it said.
A BP source told NGW earlier that in 2019 SD2 is expected to produce 2bn m³ which would all go to Turkey. “Azerbaijan’s total gas export to Turkey (SD1&2) is expected to reach 8.5bn m³ in 2019, compared with 6.5bn m³ in 2017 and to reach its contractual 12.5bn m³ in 2021."
Socar vice president for investments and marketing told NGW February 14 that the cost of some parts of SGC had fallen by 20-30%, compared to the initial estimates. Originally costed at $45bn from wellhead to landfall in Italy, the SGC is now put at below $40bn. This would make the project more competitive in EU markets, he said.
Azerbaijan’s Southern Gas Corridor Company (SGCC) has spent $8.6bn of its $11.5bn share of the giant pipeline project, including SD2 as of January 1, and will spend a further $1.3bn this year. This is about a half of last year's sum as several segments are now complete, SGCC CEO Afgan Isayev told NGW earlier.
SGC, composed of BP-led SD2, South Caucasus pipeline extension (SCPX), Trans Anatolian Pipeline (Tanap) as well as the Trans Adriatic pipeline (TAP), is to carry 16.18bn m³/yr gas to Turkey (6bn m³/yr) and the EU by early 2020. In the future, the capacity of the pipe will be brought to 24bn m3/yr, and then to 31bn m3/yr.