Tag Archives: pipelines

Azerbaijan resumes gas supply to Turkey

OCT. 9 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – BP announced that gas supplies from the Shah Deniz field in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea to Turkey had resumed after a blast on the South Caucasus pipeline disabled it on Oct. 4. CORRECTION: In last week’s bulletin, we mistakenly named the damaged gas pipeline as the Baku-Tbilsi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. BTC is, of course, an oil pipeline. Apologies.

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(News report from Issue No. 108, published on Oct. 12 2012)

Pipeline blast disables Azerbaijan’s gas pump

OCT. 4 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – An explosion disabled the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline which pumps gas from the Shah Deniz fields in the Azerbaijani section of the Caspian Sea to Turkey, media reported. This is the second explosion in the Turkish part of the BTC pipeline, a route critical for European gas supplies, this year.

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(News report from Issue No. 107, published on Oct. 5 2012)

BP and Azerbaijani state company to fund pipeline

AUG. 9 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – BP, Total and Socar, the Azerbaijani state energy company, agreed to fund a pipeline that will link with an energy transit route in the South Caucasus and pump gas across Albania and Greece to Italy. The pipeline, dubbed TAP, is part of an alternative gas route to the EU-backed Nabucco project.

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(News report from Issue No. 100, published on Aug. 10 2012)

Turkmenistan to attract investors for TAPI

JULY 28 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen officials will travel to Singapore, New York and London in September and October to try and tempt potential investors into sponsoring a proposed gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to India via Afghanistan and Pakistan, media reported. The estimated cost of the proposed pipeline, dubbed TAPI, is around $10b.

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(News report from Issue No. 099, published on Aug. 3 2012)

An energy route between the Caspian Sea and Europe

JUNE 26 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – At a ceremony in Istanbul, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan signed a deal to finally complete a gas pipeline route from the Caspian Sea to western Turkey.

The $7b deal paves the way for the Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline (dubbed TANAP) to be built across Turkey, bringing gas ever closer to Europe.

For years the EU has been trying to put together a plan for a new energy route through the South Caucasus and on to central Europe.

Its preferred option had been to build a new gas pipeline called Nabucco from eastern Turkey straight to central Europe. This though has proved complicated and momentum has slowed.

That’s why TANAP is important. It will provide the link and should be built within six years. The plan is for TANAP to carry 16bcm (billion cubic metres) of gas a year, half the capacity that Nabucco ambitiously aimed for. Still, of that 16 bcm, 6bcm is designated to Turkey and 10bcm to Europe through a proposed branch pipeline, media reported.

And TANAP — Azerbaijan owns an 80% stake, Turkey 20% — has said that capacity can be boosted. By delivering gas to western Turkey, TANAP will also secure gas for Europe.

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(News report from Issue No. 094, published on June 29 2012)

Azerbaijan-Georgia gas pipeline explodes

MAY 30 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – An explosion damaged a major pipeline pumping gas from Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea coast to Erzurum in eastern Turkey, knocking it out of action for 10 days, news agencies quoted sources as saying. It is unclear what triggered the explosion on the pipeline, an important export route for Azerbaijan’s gas.

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(News report from Issue No. 090, published on June 1 2012)

Turkmenistan’s trans-Afghanistan pipeline dream

MAY 25 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – The setting may have been relatively inauspicious but the ambition was clear to all.

At an oil and gas conference on the Turkmen Caspian Sea coast on May 23, Turkmenistan, Pakistan and India signed a gas supply deal that should mark the start of construction of a pipeline dubbed TAPI.

To deliver the gas to Pakistan and India, the plan is to build a 1,650km pipeline from Turkmenistan across war-ravaged Afghanistan — that’s the ‘A’ in TAPI.

Many commentators have said that it’s too ambitious and that it can’t be done, especially as security in Afghanistan may worsen further after NATO withdraws forces from 2014.

Still, the estimated $10b project may be too big to fail.

Pakistan and India are hungry for energy and, according to the plan, TAPI should become one of their biggest providers. At its peak TAPI should pump 33b cubic metres of gas a year, about three times the size of the EU’s proposed Nabucco pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Europe.

The project’s success is also vital to both Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. For Afghanistan, TAPI is a prestige project with a critical revenue stream. For Turkmenistan, it cements its position as one of the region’s most important energy suppliers.

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(News report from Issue No. 089, published on May 25 2012)

Turkmenistan to sign TAPI deal

MAY 4 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Sources inside the Turkmen energy ministry told the AP news agency that Turkmenistan would sign a deal with Afghanistan, Pakistan and India later this month on gas prices for the so-called TAPI pipeline. The planned pipeline, due to run from Turkmenistan to India via Afghanistan and Pakistan, is seen as an important economic step for the region.

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(News report from Issue No. 087, published on May 11 2012)

Azeri oil exports via BTC drop

APRIL 9 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Socar, Azerbaijan’s state oil company, said its oil exports through the pipeline running from Baku to Ceyhan in Turkey (BTC) dropped 7.8% in Q1 2012 compared to Q1 2011. Socar gave no reason for the oil output drop through BTC, an important energy route to Europe. In 2011 Azerbaijan’s oil production fell by 10%.

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(News report from Issue No. 083, published on April 13 2012)

Azerbaijan’s pipeline deal approaches

MARCH 29 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkish energy minister, Metin Kilci, said Turkey and Azerbaijan might agree a deal in April to build a gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea, media quoted Reuters as reporting. A deal to build the so-called Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) would please European countries which have been pushing for a new energy route from the Caspian to reduce their reliance on Russian gas supplies.

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(News report from Issue No. 081, published on March 30 2012)