TAP MD: TAP Will Be Ready for Shah Deniz Gas

Kjetil Tungland, Managing Director of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, has said that pipeline will be ready to transport first gas from the Shah Deniz-2 project.

At a conference in Baku today, the MD said that TAP could meet the schedule of the massive Azerbaijan field, should gas be ready to flow in 2018, with construction beginning on the pipeline in 2014.

"We will be ready to transport gas from the second stage of the Shah Deniz field development in 2018, if the first volumes within this project are produced in 2017," the Trend news agency reports him as saying.

Mr. Tungland also told the conference that the consortium over the pipeline would be ready to expand TAP's capacity, should this be required, with the addition of the two more compressor stations.

"By adding two more compressor stations we can expand the pipeline's capacity to 20 billion cubic meters," he said.

The Trans Adriatic Pipeline is just one pipeline in the running for the transport of Shah Deniz gas to Europe, bring gas from the Shah Deniz field through the Adriatic Sea and into Italy, Greece and Albania. The consortium over the pipeline has three shareholders; EGL and Statoil hold a 42.5 per cent stake each, while E.ON Ruhrgas holds the remaining 15 per cent stake.

Related Reading: Natural Gas Europe interview with Kjetil Tungland (HERE)