Azerbaijan builds TANAP not for Iranian or Turkmen gas, says expert

The first foreign leader, who has visited Tehran after the breakthrough at the talks on the Iranian nuclear program, was Turkish President Rejep Tayyip Erdogan. Before Erdogan’s visit Iranian mass media wrote that Iran’s possibility to export its gas to the West through Turkey or via the TANAP gas pipeline, to be more precise, will be among the main subjects of discussion.

“Small volume of Iranian gas could be delivered to Europe through TANAP. However, we need to take into consideration the fact that Azerbaijan is building TANAP not for export of a big volume of transit gas via it. 20 billion cub.m. of Iranian gas and 10 billion cub.m. of its own gas or 10 billion cub.m. of Iranian gas, 10 billion cub.m. of Turkmen gas and 10 billion cub.m. of gas from the Shah Deniz field. In this case how are we going to export gas from the Absheron, Umid-Babak and deep-water section of Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) fields to the foreign markets in the future? Are we going to build another export pipeline,” said Ilham Shaban, head of the Centre for Oil Studies Caspian Barrel.

Shaban added that Erdogan has no legal right to dispose of the private pipeline, which is operated by the company from another country.

“I think that the issue of transit of Iranian gas through Turkey will be discussed only in the political context. Iran is interested in export of its gas to Europe and Turkey is a reliable transit country,” said the same source.

Shaban believes that a required infrastructure is needed to receive a big volume of Iranian gas in Europe (25-30 billion cub.m.). “5-6 billion cub.m. of gas is enough for the Eastern European countries to diversify their sources. This means that the remaining volume must be exported to Baumgarten, Austria. Then it will be necessary to build as minimum the Nabucco-West pipeline with the carrying capacity of 20 billion cub.m. This will require finances, coordination of many issues and a stage-by-stage regulation of the relationships between the West and Iran. But this is not the issue of the coming five years,” he said confidently.

Turkey imports about 10 billion cub.m. of Iranian gas a year via the Tebriz-Erzurum pipeline with the carrying capacity of 14 billion cub.m.—0—