In September 2012 SOCAR officially offered its partners in Shah-Deniz project - BP, Statoil and Total - to join the trans-Anadolu gas pipeline project (TANAP). Unofficially it happened earlier. In addition, the companies did not hide their interest in the project.
In early November 2012 SOCAR President Rovnag Abdullayev told journalists that the companies have notified him how they are going to divide the share provided by SOCAR. According to preliminary information, the partners are going to distribute the share as following: BP and Statoil - 12% each and Total - 5%. It turned out later that the companies and SOCAR have some disagreements in this issue.
The companies claimed in the "leaked" information that "the disagreement has nothing to do with the size of the share and they do not claim to a big share." Why don't the sides sign the agreement on purchase-sale of SOCAR's share and joining the project? The sides keep silence and time passes. SOCAR representative Vitally Beglyarvekov said in his interview to Bloomberg news agency that "TANAP will be implemented according to the schedule even without those companies."
Yesterday one media reported quoting SOCAR's representative that SOCAR's position to the companies' joining TANAP remains unchanged. One can suppose that the sides adhere to their own positions.
TURAN agency found out the reason or one of the reasons of disagreements between the companies and TANAP operator - SOCAR.
BP, Statoil and Total do not want to be passive partners of the project. They would like to be founders of TANAP Co company on condition that they will influence the decision making. It is clear that they will not be able to do that with their shares and they want to apply the principle of the Shah-Deniz Gas Exporters Group in TANAP project. The Group has signed a financial agreement with TAP consortium and is going to sign the same with Nabucco-West.
It is hard to say when the issue will be solved, but time passes and the Russian South Stream project, the main competitor of TANAP (including TAP and Nabucco West) has been already launched.-0-
Economics
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