EU ready to fund Trans-Caspian gas pipeline

The EU is willing to fund a good part of the prospective Trans-Caspian gas pipeline (TCP), Platts reported with the reference to the EU Special Representative for Central Asia Pierre Morel.

Morel said at the CIS Oil and Gas Summit in Paris on Monday that the EU funding for this project would come only with the most extensive environmental safeguards.

He also stressed that while the EU takes no position on the legal status of the Caspian Sea, the TCP would lie in the undisputed territorial waters of Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. Moreover, a precedent for such projects has already been set by agreements between Russia and Kazakhstan for offshore platforms in the northern Caspian.

According to Morel, the mandate agreed by EU ministers to negotiate on the Southern Gas Corridor last September was a turning point for the EU, being the first time in 50 years that such a mandate has been agreed.

Trans-Caspian gas pipeline running to around 300 kilometres will be laid from the Turkmen coast of the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijani, where it will be linked to the Southern Gas Corridor. Negotiations between Turkmenistan and the EU and other countries on the construction of the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline have been on-going since the late 90s.

In September, 2011 the EU Council gave a mandate for negotiations between the EU, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan to build the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline.

However, later, Iran and Russia expressed negative attitude toward this project. Tehran and Moscow think that the pipeline construction will damage the Caspian Sea environment.

Earlier Ukraine also expressed its willingness to invest in Trans Caspian project. According to the high ranking source in Ukraine's ministry of energy, the country plans to invest 790 million euros (10 percent of the project's total cost) in Trans Caspian Pipeline project if the pipeline is linked to LNG terminal Kulevi in Georgia.


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