When will European consumers receive first gas from Azerbaijan?

On December 17, 2013 Azerbaijan authorized the Shah-Deniz Phase 2 gas condensate field development worth $28 billion. 

62.5% of gas extracted from the Shah-Deniz Phase-2 project a year is planned to be delivered to the European markets. According to the plans of the consortium, gas extraction from the Shah-Deniz Phase 2 will begin at the end of 2018 and its export will begin in 2019.

The European Commission has recently released the official document on occasion of the Shah-Deniz-2, which specifies which European consumers will receive Azerbaijani gas since the end of 2019.

The document also noted that the Southern Gas Corridor will be formed by the trans Anadolu gas pipeline (TANAP) through Italy and trans Adriatic gas pipeline (TAP) through Greece and Albania to Italy. The initial capacity of the TAP will be 10 billion cub.m. a year with the possibility of expanding up to 20 billion cub.m.

TAP shareholders are BP, State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) and Norwegian Statoil (20% each), Belgian Fluxys (16%), French Total (10%), German E.ON Ruhrgas (9%) and Swiss Axpo (5%). TAP construction is expected to begin in 2015.

Gas from the Shah-Deniz field will be bought by the companies from Italy, Greece and Bulgaria. EU press officer Marlene Holzner did not specify at the press conference if gas is going to be cheaper for EU, than gas supplied by Gasprom.—0—