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bne December 2019 Eurasia I 61
present in the country for a while were in attendance. Additional focus was
on other sectors in Turkmenistan that could use international investments. Italian members in the audience represented SMEs in sectors such as engineering, oil services, textile and consumer goods. Most are not yet in this market or left after import controls were put in place, but they are keen to keep up contacts in case things change. Some had meetings with Turkmen companies on the sidelines of the conference.
Enthusiasm is held back by concerns about non-payment after projects
are finished. A shortage of foreign currency has caused problems for local companies to fully compensate their business partners and Turkish, German and Russian counterparties have sued the government for non-payment. Anticipating these worries, Italian export credit company SACE presented ‘risk-management’ solutions at the forum, with a special focus on SMEs.
And many participants had come to
the conference hoping for some news
on the country’s major new energy infrastructure project, the Turkmenistan- Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline project. But their hopes were dashed by only a very general presentation by Muhammetmyrat Amanov, CEO of the TAPI Pipeline Company and son-in-law of the President.
TAPI will bring gas from the giant Galkynysh field in eastern Turkmenistan to the Indian market via Afghanistan and Pakistan, opening up a new gas export vector in the process, but progress on the Turkmen part of the pipeline is shrouded in mystery.
A Turkmen official gave private assurances that the 200km Turkmen section of the 1,814km pipeline is finished. But according to an Italian oil official present in Milan only 40km of the Turkmen section is now laid with the timing of the remaining work under a question mark.
As ever with Turkmenistan, nothing is straightforward.
Azerbaijani gas ‘won’t flow to EU terminus until at least October 2020’
Wojciech Kosc in Warsaw
No Azerbaijani gas will flow to the European Union market until at least October 2020. And a gas supply company in Azerbaijan may end up facing a big bill because of the delays. That much became clear on November 1 after the head of the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) consortium gave an interview to Reuters.
Gas supplies from Azerbaijan’s giant Shah Deniz field in the Caspian Sea are to reach Europe via the $40bn Southern Gas Corridor (SGC), supported by the European Union as a major step in diversifying energy supplies away from over-dependence on existing sources such as Russia and Norway. The SGC links the 692-km South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) running from Azerbaijan
to Georgia, TANAP, which runs 1,850 km from the Georgian border through Turkey to the Greek border and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), an 878 km pipeline which traverses Greece and Albania and an Adriatic seabed route to southern Italy.
The Southern Gas Corridor, made up of three interconnected pipelines stretching 3,400 km, will deliver Caspian Sea gas from Azerbaijan to
a terminus in southern Italy.
“It is not TANAP, but the other parties that have not yet reached project completion,” TANAP chief Saltuk Duzyol said in his interview, cautioning: “Commercially, according to our gas transportation agreements, we are entitled to issue invoices starting from July 1 next year.”
Under the Shah Deniz II gas sales deal, Azerbaijan Gas Supply Company (AGSC) – formed by Azerbaijan’s national energy company Socar and its Shah Deniz project partners and which manages gas sales from the Shah Deniz field – has to pay fines to gas buyers if they do not get supplies by July 1, 2020.
Shah Deniz I has been pumping gas since 2006, selling it to Georgia and Turkey. Shah Deniz II is expected to attain 16bn cubic metres (bcm) of gas per year by 2021. Some 10 bcm of that is earmarked for Europe and 6 bcm for Turkey.
“Commercial deliveries of Azeri gas to Europe can begin no earlier than October 2020, since the construction work on the TAP pipeline can be completed by this date,” Duzyol added.
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