The Turkish (L) and Azerbaijani (R) presidents broke ground on the new pipeline on September 25 (President.az)
Oct 14, 2023. Posted by Balkan
Periscope - Hellas
Azerbaijan and Turkey have broken ground on the construction of the
long-planned gas pipeline linking Turkey’s gas grid to the Azerbaijani exclave
of Nakhchivan (Nakhichevan).
Construction was formally launched at a ceremony in Nakhchivan on September 25 attended by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan which saw the signing of agreements on energy, transport and public housing.
The new pipeline, which is being constructed under a memorandum of understanding
signed between Azerbaijan and Turkey in December 2020, and is expected to be
completed by the end of 2024, will run for 80 kilometers inside Turkey between
Turkey’s main transit pipeline at Igdir to the border, and then for a further
17.5 kilometers inside Nakhchivan.
Once complete, the line will enable Azerbaijan to supply Nakhchivan with
its own gas delivered via Turkey, ending the enclave’s dependence on Iranian
gas imported directly through a separate pipeline from Iran.
Nakhchivan’s annual gas demand is reported to be around 500 million
cubic meters a year with President Aliyev’s official website reporting
that the pipeline being laid will have a capacity of around 2 million cubic
meters a day, or around 730 million cubic meters a year which “can be
more than doubled.”
That ultimate capacity of around 1.5 billion cubic meters a year appears to
be borne out by documents relating to the construction tender for the Turkish
section of the line which specify a pipeline with a diameter of 16 inches.
If so, that would for the time being at least put to rest speculation that
Baku is interested in laying a major gas export pipeline through its
proposed “Zangezur corridor” that would connect mainland Azerbaijan
with Nakhchivan through Armenia.
Speaking in March, Azerbaijan’s energy minister Parviz Shahbazov
suggested that the Zangezur corridor could be used as both a transport and
energy corridor between Azerbaijan and Europe, but did not clarify further on
whether this would include gas exports.
The status of the corridor itself is equally unclear. The notion was born
out of the Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended the 2020 Second
Karabakh War. The ninth point of the ceasefire stipulated that Armenia would
“guarantee the security of transport connections” to Nakhchivan “in order to
arrange unobstructed movement of persons, vehicles and cargo in both
directions.” Russian border guards would be responsible for “overseeing” the
route.
But Baku and Yerevan remain at odds both over what that means – a simple
re-establishing of transport links, or a full-on corridor through Armenian
territory that is beyond Armenian sovereignty.
That said, a major gas pipeline connecting Azerbaijan with Turkey through
Armenia — as politically improbable as it seems now — could benefit Yerevan as
well as Baku.
As well as providing a new route for transiting Azerbaijani or other
Caspian gas to Turkey and on to Europe, it could also provide Armenia with new
sources of gas as competition for Russia’s Gazprom, which currently enjoys
monopoly control over Armenia’s gas imports from both Russia and Iran.
Transit and Trading Potential
Whether or not the Turkey-Nakhchivan pipeline is extended further through a
corridor to Azerbaijan, the modest pipeline under construction already offers
some potential for regional gas trading which could potentially expand gas
exports through Turkey to Europe.
Although ostensibly designed to supply Azerbaijani gas to Nakhchivan in
place of the Iranian gas the enclave currently uses, pipelines can be
constructed to operate in two directions.
The pipeline could also simply offer to supply Azerbaijani gas as
competition for Iranian gas, encouraging Tehran to drop its prices in return
for being allowed to transit its gas through Nakhchivan to Turkey.
If Nakhchivan’s gas demand remains unchanged at around 500 million cubic
meters a year, and the Turkey-Nakhchivan pipeline is expanded to its full
capacity of around 1.5 billion cubic meters a year, that would offer a
potential capacity of around 1 billion cubic meters a year for transiting
Iranian gas to Turkey.
Turkey already imports Iranian gas under a long-term contract but is keen
to find new sources of gas to be traded on Ankara’s planned gas trading hub in
northwestern Turkey, both for sale into the Turkish market and for transit via
Turkey’s existing transit grid to Europe.
The Armenian
Mirror- Spetator
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