Iran inches closer to Azerbaijan’s EU gas export plan

Mahmoud Vaezi, the co-chairman of Iran-Azerbaijan Joint Economic Commission, has told Azerbaijan’s Trend news agency that serious negotiations to the same effect are currently underway between Tehran and Baku.

"The Iranian company NICO owns equity in the Shah Deniz project, and we have held talks to increase its stake in the project,” said Vaezi who is also Iran’s minister of communications and information technology.

NICO owns a 10 percent stake in the development of Shah Deniz gas field which is located in Caspian Sea waters.  Other shareholders are BP, operator (28.8 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), Petronas (15.5 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), and TPAO (19 percent).

Trend has also quoted another Iranian official - Mehdi Mohtashami who heads the Secretariat of the same Iran-Azerbaijan commission, as saying that Tehran is determined to acquire a stake in the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline Project (TAP) pipeline project which assumes the delivery of gas from Azerbaijani to Europe.

"Iran is examining various routes for supplying its gas to other countries, and TAP is one of those routes,” he said. "We have already had preliminary talks with Azerbaijan and have done certain work in this regard.”

The development of Phase Two of Shah Deniz envisages a rise of 7 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year in the overall production of the field (16 bcm/y). 

The gas from Phase Two will be exported to Turkey and thereon to European markets by expanding the South Caucasus gas pipeline and the construction of Trans-Anatolian (TANAP) and TAP gas pipelines.  

 

(Press TV)