Azerbaijani Foreign Minister: Azerbaijan intends to expand gas supplies to Greece

Azerbaijan  intends to expand the natural gas supply to Greece, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov in Athens. Mammadyarov is on official visit to Greece.

"Azerbaijan’s natural gas is already available on the Greek market in the amount of 700 million cubic meters (per year), and we are in discussions at the company level to increase these volumes," Mammadyarov said at the talks with Greek Foreign Minister Dimitris Droutsas, RIA Novosti reported.

Mammadyarov said Greece became the first country in the EU, which uses gas from the Caspian basin, and Baku believes a "great future" exist for further deliveries to the EU via Greece.

In turn, Droutsas expressed Greece’s interest in the construction of ITGI (Turkey-Greece-Italy). Athens would like to get gas from Azerbaijan via this pipeline in the increased amounts, but is differences between Baku and Ankara regarding the Turkish transit of raw materials still hampered this.

"Our Azerbaijani friends know that our commitment to the pipeline that will connect Azerbaijan to Italy via Turkey remains unchanged. ITGI is mature project,” he said.

Earlier in February the European Commission did not exclude cooperation of the partners in the implementation of the Nabucco gas pipeline project and ITGI, which are included in the Southern Gas Corridor, designed to transport natural gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe, RIA Novosti reported citing a source in the European Commission.

Nabucco project id designed to transport gas from the Caspian region and the Middle East to the EU countries. The project is worth 7.9 billion euro, with its construction planned to start in 2012 and the first supplies to be commissioned in 2015. The project's participants include the Austrian OMV, Hungarian MOL, Bulgarian Bulgargaz, Romanian Transgaz, Turkish Botas and German RWE.

ITGI includes a modernized Turkish pipeline infrastructure, as well as projects ITG (connecting pipeline Turkey-Greece) and IGI (Greece-Italy). IGI Poseidon S.A. was created by the Italian company Edison and Greek company Depa for the design and construction of the pipeline Greece-Italy, known as Poseidon.


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