Bulgaria to supply gas from Azerbaijan very soon

The construction of the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria gas pipeline will start in 2015, the Azerbaijani Minister of Energy Natig Aliyev said at a meeting with Bulgaria’s Economy and Energy Minister Dragomir Stoynev.

Stoynev said that Bulgaria intends to secure gas supplies from Azerbaijan as soon as possible, ITAR-TASS reports.

“A billion cubic meters of gas from Azerbaijan, on the supply of which we have signed an agreement in September 2013, will be supplied via the interconnector with Greece, and the technical design of the pipeline is to be prepared this year. By the end of April we will start to solve the problems of financing the project, and several banks have already expressed the preliminary desire to participate in it. And the construction of a direct interconnector will begin next year,” Stoynev said.

The bilateral relations between Bulgaria and Azerbaijan reach the level of strategic partnership, Aliyev said.

“We found the real solution to the issue of gas supplies to Bulgaria last year, when an agreement signed on the supply of one billion cubic meters of gas in the presence of conditions for its transportation, which, particularly, envisages the need for constructing an interconnector between the “Bulgargaz” company, Shah Deniz consortium and the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic,” the Azerbaijani minister noted.

In September2013, the consortium for the development of the Shah Deniz gas condensate field in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, signed long term contracts (25 years) with nine European companies on gas supply.

The contracts for the purchase of gas from the second phase of development of the Shah Deniz field were signed in Baku with the following companies: Shell, Bulgar Gas, DEPA, Gas Natural Fenosa, EON, Gaz de France, Hera, Enel and Axpo.

The first gas will be delivered to Turkey in 2018 and to Europe in 2019. About 10 billion cubic meters of gas will be delivered to Europe via the Trans-Adriatic gas pipeline (TAP).

TAP is designed to transport gas from the Caspian region through Greece and Albania and across the Adriatic Sea to southern Italy and then on to Western Europe.

The initial capacity of the TAP pipeline will be 10 billion cubic meters per year with the possibility of expanding to 20 billion cubic meters per year.

TAP shareholders are BP (20 percent), SOCAR (20 percent), Statoil (20 percent), Fluxys (16 percent), Total (10 percent), E.ON (nine percent) and Axpo (five percent).