The Vice-President of the European Commission for the Energy Union, Maros Sefcovic, welcomed the inauguration, on Tuesday 12 June, of the Turkish gas pipeline TANAP (or trans-Anatolian), which will eventually open the door into the EU for gas resources from the Caspian Sea region and Central Asia.
At a ceremony in Eskişehir on Tuesday attended by his counterparts from Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, and Georgia, Giorgi Margvelashvili, the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, officially opened TANAP, which passed through Turkey for over 1850 km between its borders with Greece to the west and Georgia to the east.
TANAP is one of the three connected infrastructures of the 'Southern gas corridor' that will channel gas from the Azerbaijani Shah Deniz-2 fields in the Caspian Sea to the EU. It is connected to the Southern Caucasus Pipeline (SCP), which crosses Azerbaijan and Georgia, and will be linked up to the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which will enter southern Italy via Greece and Albania from Turkey.
“By helping diversify our energy suppliers and routes, the Southern Gas Corridor is strategically important for the EU's energy security, including in the most vulnerable parts, such as South-East Europe and Southern Italy”, Sefcovic commented.
“We all stand to gain from this bridge between the Caspian region and the EU market. Our long-term objective is to create a pan-European energy market based on free trade, competition and diversified supplies, sources and routes”, he added.
Sefcovic expressed confidence that the construction of the TAP would “continue to progress also thanks to the continuous support of the three national governments involved, so that Caspian gas reaches the EU by 2020”.
At the most recent consultative council on the Southern Gas Corridor in Baku in mid-February, Sefcovic stressed that this supply route remained open to other sources of gas supplies, including those from Turkmenistan or Iran. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)