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Giant Caspian gas field to start feeding Europe in weeks: BP
AFP
SANGACHAL, Azerbaijan
Petroleumworld.com 09 15 06
A consortium of Western companies is set to start production at a massive Caspian Sea gas field at the end of the month that will provide Europe with an extra source of the fuel, energy giant BP said on Thursday.
"Production will start at the end of the month and will grow in the course of the year," BP Azerbaijan's president David Woodward told reporters at the oil-rich nation's main oil and gas terminal Sangachal.
The Caspian's Shah Deniz field, whose major shareholders are British BP, Norway's Statoil and the Azerbaijani state oil company SOCAR, will feed a new pipeline that leads to Turkey, where it will link up with European networks.
Woodward said Shah Deniz gas would be fed through the new South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP), which traverses Azerbaijan and Georgia before terminating in the Turkish city of Erzerum, and would reach Turkey by the end of October.
The pipline is projected to reach a capacity of 8.8 billion cubic meters (310 billion cubic feet) of gas per year in the next few years. After 2012 its capacity could be expanded to 20 bcm per year, BP has said.
The pipeline, which was built to supply energy-hungry Europe, will have the added effect of loosening Russia's grip on energy markets in Azerbaijan and Georgia.
The two former Soviet republics still rely heavily on imports of Russian gas to heat homes and produce electricity.
Azerbaijan recently launched the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which mostly matches the path of the SCP but terminates in a Turkish Mediterranean port.
The pipeline gives producers on the landlocked Caspian a route to export their oil that by-passes Russia.
AFP 140911 GMT 09 06
Copyright ©2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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