New Turkish Pipeline No Threat To Southern Gas Corridor

The Russian-Turkish project for a new natural gas pipeline will not compete with the Southern Gas Corridor pipeline project, Rovnag Abdullayev, president of Azerbaijan's state-owned energy giant SOCAR, said Monday.

As a result, there is no danger of a dispute with Turkey about the project, Abdullayev said, speaking at a press conference.

"Every project in the region has its own market," he said.

The European South Stream pipeline project, which Russia has decided to renounce, would also not have competed with the Southern Gas Corridor, Abdullayev said.

The Southern Gas Corridor will break ground in 2015, and parts of the conduit will be operational by 2020. Tender offers for the Trans Anatolian Pipeline -- the section of the project --  have already been completed, and offers for the construction work are being reviewed.

The Russian-Turkish project will build a pipeline across the bottom of the Black Sea, and will build a distribution hub on the border between Greece and Turkey to bring gas to Europe. It's capacity will be 63 billion cubic meters.

The Southern Gas Corridor is an EU project for which planning began in 2008. It is comprised of several different projects, according to the website of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, with a total capacity of 120 billion cubic meters.

The gas corridor include:

The Shah Deniz 2 development, drilling wells and producing gas offshore in the Caspian Sea. Expansion of the natural gas processing plant at the Sangachal Terminal on the Caspian Sea coast in Azerbaijan. Three pipeline projects: South Caucasus Pipeline -- Azerbaijan, Georgia Trans Anatolian Pipeline -- Turkey Trans Adriatic Pipeline -- Greece, Albania, Italy Expansion of the Italian gas transmission network. Possibilities for further connection to gas networks in South Eastern, Central and Western Europe.The Southern Gas Corridor is projected to cost about $45 billion.

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