Yesterday at 23:03
The Caspian Sea sourced route is poised to boost Europe’s energy security by reducing its dependence on gas imports from Russia.
Ukraine was among the international delegations invited to attend the project’s opening. UATV’s correspondent covered the event.
The gas distributing station sits 30 kilometers away from the city of Eskişehir in northewestern Turkey. The starting transport capacity of the pipeline will be 16 billion cubic meters of gas annually.
“Six billion cubic meters will be piped to Turkey and ten billion cubic meters will be piped to Europe,” said the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Depending on the demand, we aim to increase the capacity to 22 billion cubic meters and then to 31 billion cubic meters with additional investments.”
The gas will be transported from Azerbaijan, through Georgia and Turkey, and then to Europe. Connecting pipelines are planned to be built through the Balkans to supply Western Europe.
TANAP is part of the Southern Gas Corridor, an initiative to bypass Russia in transporting gas to Europe. It is an alternative to the TurkStream pipeline currently being built by Russian Gazprom.
“The beginning of construction of the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline is a very important event for two reasons. Firstly, because it encourages hope that southeastern Europe region will not remain as a isolated area when it comes to big infrastructure on energy projects. Secondly, because this project will improve energy connectivity of this part of Europe and thereby impact the improvement of investment climate and, I am certain, arrival of new investors to the countries of our region,” said Aleksandar Vučić, president of Serbia.
Delegations from Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia attended the opening ceremony of TANAP. President Petro Poroshenko was present as well.
Poroshenko has said that this project is important for Ukraine itself as another option for the diversification of gas supply. According to him, Ukraine will also be able to get fuel through this corridor.
