Turkey and Azerbaijan Inaugurated TANAP Pipeline to Take Gas to Europe

The opening ceremony of Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP)-Europe connection was held on Saturday in the country’s northwestern province of Edirne with attendance from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Haidar Aliyev.

A 1,850-kilometer-long pipeline through Turkey, TANAP is set to ship 16 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas a year from the Shah Deniz field off Azerbaijan’s Caspian coast. While 6 bcm of the amount will be directed to the Turkish market, 10 bcm will be for customers in Europe. 

TANAP is one of the most concrete examples of the peaceful vision Turkey holds, Erdoğan said in a speech during the opening ceremony. 

"TANAP connects to the [Transadriatic Pipeline] TAP line and from there countries like Bulgaria, Greece and Bosnia and Herzegovina benefit from it. It must be noted that this is a peace project,’’ state-run Anadolu news agency quoted Erdoğan as saying.

"While the global agenda is currently bogged down with trade wars, terrorism, uprisings and instability, Turkey is once again connecting Europe and Asia through TANAP," he added.

Construction on the project, which will put Azerbaijan on Europe’s gas map, began in 2015 following a groundbreaking ceremony attended by Erdoğan and Aliyev in Turkey’s northeastern province of Kars.

In June 2018, the first phase of the TANAP project, from the Turkish-Georgian border to the country’s northwestern province of Eskişehir, was completed.

The project saw the first transportation of commercial gas to Turkey in June 30, 2018 with the second phase of the project from Eskişehir to the Turkish-Greek border completed in June of this year.