EU sees natural gas supplies from Azerbaijan by 2019

The European Union (EU), keen to lessen its dependence on Russia for energy supplies, expects to start receiving natural gas from Turkmenistan by 2019, European Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic said in an interview, according to Bornea Post.

Russia currently supplies around a third of Europe’s gas needs, but Crimea and its involvement in the military conflict in eastern Ukraine has added urgency to the EU’s search for gas from alternative sources.

“We have good mutual understanding. For Turkmenistan it is very important to diversify its export options, while for the EU it is very important to diversify its imports,” Sefcovic told Reuters in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat.

“Europe expects supplies of Turkmen gas to begin by 2019,” he said, speaking in Russian.
Turkmenistan, a Central Asian nation with the world’s fourth-largest reserves of natural gas, is keen to diversify exports of the fuel away from Russia which will cut its imports to four billion cubic metres (bcm) this year from 11bcm in 2014.

Sefcovic is overseeing the EU’s push for an energy union, a single market for power and gas based on better connections between member states and aimed at curbing Russia’s dominant position, particularly in the gas market.

Visiting Ashgabat on Friday, he met Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz, Azerbaijan’s Energy Minister Natiq Aliyev, Turkmen Deputy Prime Minister Baymurad Hojamukhamedov and Yagshygeldy Kakayev, who heads Turkmenistan’s hydrocarbon resources agency.

“In this format we discussed all aspects referring to the trans-Caspian pipeline,” Sefcovic said.

“We made a big step in the strategic direction.”

The project, designed to bring Turkmen gas to Europe across the Caspian Sea via the so-called “southern gas corridor” which includes Azerbaijan and Turkey, has been stuck for years due to political, ecological and financial uncertainties.

“Now there is a political decision that Turkmenistan will become part of this project and will feed the European direction,” Sefcovic said.

Last year, Turkmenistan and Turkey signed a framework agreement to supply gas to the proposed Trans-Anatolian natural gas pipeline project (TANAP), which will take gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz II field in the Caspian Sea.