Southern Gas Corridor project to be profitable by 2030 - Azeri minister

The Southern Gas Corridor SGC project will be operational for 50-60 years. Revenues from the SGC and Sah Daniz [Shah Deniz] Phase 2 will probably exceed their costs by 2028-2030, Azerbaijani Energy Minister Natiq Aliyev said in an interview with the Natural Gas Europe website.

Each player in the projects has own assessment with regard to their profitability, he said.

"Azerbaijani considers Sah Daniz, TANAP (the Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline) and TAP (Trans-Adriatic Pipeline) as a single project. The costs of the Sah Daniz Phase 2 are estimated to be at 25bn dollars and of SGC 20bn dollars. It is planned to start gas exports to Turkey in 2018 and to Europe in 2020.

It is worth noting that the revenue from the Sah Daniz-2 will come prior to gas reaches Europe. On the basis of the production sharing agreement, a part of the expenses will be received by 2020. On the other hand, in addition to 16bn cu. m. of gas from Sah Daniz-2 annually, over 29m barrels of gas condensate will be produced a year to be exported via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC). The annual natural gas and gas condensate production from the Sah Daniz-1 totals about 10bn cu. m. and 16.4m barrels," said Aliyev.

The Southern Gas Corridor is one of the priority projects for the EU and envisages export of 10bn cu. m. of Azerbaijani gas to Europe and 6bn cu. m. of gas to Turkey.

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