Page 36 - GEORptJul18

9.0 Industry & Sectors 9.1 Sector news
9.1.1 Oil & gas sector news
The presidents of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia will on June 12 inaugurate the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) project, Ankara said on June 10. The TANAP opening ceremony will be held in Eskisehir, central Turkey, under the auspices of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and with the presence of Azerbaijan’s Ihham Aliyev and Georgia’s Margvelashvili. The pipeline is a component of the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) which is to transport natural gas from Azerbaijan’s giant Shah Deniz-2 gas field in the Caspian Sea and nearby fields to Turkey and southern Europe. SCG will rival Russia’s TurkStream pipeline which will deliver gas to Turkey and Bulgaria via a Black Sea route and, if plans are realised, feed gas into the wider southern European gas network.
TANAP, built at a cost of $8.5bn, is to deliver 6bn cubic metres of gas to Turkey and 10bn cm to Europe annually. The European leg of the SCG is expected to become operational in 2020.
TANAP, running from the eastern province of Ardahan in Turkey on the border with Georgia to points on the borders with Greece and Bulgaria, is the central and longest section of the SGC. Gas will be fed into it from the Azerbaijan-to-Georgia-to-Turkey South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) . Gas from TANAP will flow into the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline that starts in Greece and runs to Italy via Albania and a route under the Adriatic Sea.
Oil and oil-related shipments from Georgia’s Black Sea port of Batumi fell 53.7% y/y between January and April from a year earlier, an official at the KazMunaiGas-operated terminal told Reuters on May 3. The official said some crude oil volumes were rerouted to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium this year, while some fuel oil was sent to the port of Taman in Russia and Georgia’s other Black Sea port of Kulevi. January-April shipments of crude oil and refined oil products from Batumi totalled 415,613 tonnes, down from 898,316 tonnes in the same period last year, said the official, who asked not to be identified. In April alone, overall shipments were 115,086 tonnes, compared with 98,205 tonnes the previous month and 249,735 tonnes in April last year. The news agency said shipments of crude oil and refined oil products from Batumi totalled 2.109mn tonnes in 2017, down from 3.377mn in 2016.
The Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), a natural gas pipeline running from Azerbaijan to Georgia to Turkey to Europe, will go into operation on June 12, Georgia Today reported on May 15. The Minister of Energy and Natural Resources of Turkey, Berat Albayrak, reportedly said gas supplies would subsequently begin on June 30. TANAP, part of the Southern Gas Corridor which is also to be formed by the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) and the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), gives Azerbaijan the opportunity to establish more vital hard currency revenues by exploiting its giant Shah Deniz gas field in the south of the Caspian Sea. The key objective is to sell gas on the Western European market. The TANAP construction project was launched in March 2015. Shah Deniz Stage 2, or Full Field Development
36 GEORGIA Country Report July 2018 www.intellinews.com