By  Trend

Step by step Azerbaijan was coming towards the main energy project which is the Southern Gas Corridor and implementation of this project is a reality today, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said at the 5th Ministerial Meeting of the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) Advisory Council at the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku.

“If we look at the chronology of our energy development, we see that step by step we were coming towards the main goal, to diversify our energy supplies and to build modern energy transportation infrastructure,” he added.

“Therefore, of course commissioning of the pipeline connecting Caspian Sea and the Black Sea in the end of 1990s, Baku-Supsa was important element of energy supply and diversification,” President Aliyev said. “Then came Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan that was a historical event. In 2006, this huge energy project was inaugurated that allowed companies to invest more, to extract more, and allowed us to export as much as we can. And today Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan also is transporting oil from other countries.”

“So, Azerbaijan is already an important transitor for oil supplies, and therefore, of course, the role of Azerbaijan in the region is growing,” he said.

“In 2007, Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline was inaugurated, and for the first time Azerbaijan became gas exporter to international markets,” the president said. “Before that, we were actually importing natural gas. So as I said, step by step we were coming towards the main energy projects which is the Southern Gas Corridor and implementation of the Southern Gas Corridor today is a reality. And I remember in 2012, Azerbaijan and Turkey signed an agreement on TANAP, which actually was a starting point for the Southern Gas Corridor.”

“A year later, in 2013, the companies made an investment decision to develop Shah Deniz-2, second phase of Shah Deniz, and in 2013, Trans-Adriatic pipeline also was selected as the continuation of TANAP,” he said. “So, all this demonstrates that we were working very closely with our partners, and really team work made it possible to talk about success.”