The gas from Azerbaijan will reach the Western European countries through a pipeline that will cross Turkey and this project is meant to reduce the dependence of the European countries on the Russian gas.

This project - the Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline (TANAP) - costs $10 billion and it was recently inaugurated by Turkey. The capacity of the new pipeline is 16 billion cubic meters of gas a year and this will be reached by 2018. The gas will be transported from the Shah Deniz II field in the Caspian Sea that is operated by a BP-led consortium.

The pipeline is 1,850 km long, between the border of Turkey/Georgia and Greece, and the Turkish authorities own a third of this project, while BP has 12% and SOCAR (an Azeri oil firm) - 58%. The main benefit for the Turkish citizens is that they will be independent from the Russian gas and they will have the possibility to offer gas for other European countries, becoming an energy “distribution hub” for the entire region, as president of Turkey Erdogan declared.  

This project is an alternative to the Russian project of South Stream that was abandoned, after receiving strong objections from the European countries. The Russian authorities thought about building a new pipeline - the Turkish Stream.

For the Turkish authorities, the TANAP remains the most important project and they consider that there is no alternative to this one. The capacity of this pipeline will increase in time, from 16 billion cubic meters of gas a year in 2018 to 31 billion cubic meters of gas a year in 2026, after it will be connected to the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).

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