Azerbaijan committed to secure gas lines

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BRUSSELS, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- An adviser to the president of Azeri energy company said Azerbaijan was committed to secure gas transit infrastructure like the Trans-Anatolia pipeline.

TANAP is designed to carry natural gas from the BP-controlled Shah Deniz field in the Azeri waters of the Caspian Sea through Turkish territory. It's designed to deliver as much as 350 billion cubic feet of natural gas for European consumers per year.

Murad Heydarov, adviser for the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic, told the EurActiv news site from Brussels that projects like TANAP showed Baku's committee to safe and secure gas infrastructure for Europe.

TANAP, he said, was "reliable, robust, safe, operationally excellent and scalable."

The project would cross through Turkish territory to the European border before it connects to either the Nabucco West or Trans-Adriatic gas pipelines.

Project partners expect to have TANAP built before Shah Deniz starts production by 2017. First exports from the second phase of the Shah Deniz field are expected by 2018.

SOCAR in September offered to sell a 29 percent stake in the TANAP pipeline to potential partners like BP, Norwegian energy company Statoil and French major Total.