Azerbaijan, Georgia and Romania and gas transportation

On September 14, a top level meeting will be held in Baku. Presidents of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliev, Georgia – Mikheil Saakashvili and Romania –Traian Basescu will meet to discuss the gas transportation project AGRI – Azerbaijan, Georgia Romania Interconnection. From September 6 working groups will prepare the so-called Baku declaration which will be signed at the summit. On September 13, ministers of energy will gather and it is understood that the Baku summit will be attended by the President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barosso and EU Commissioner on energy issues Gunther Oettinger.

A 3-party working group has already been working on the project and presumably in September an international tender will be announced for creating the feasibility study for the project. As previously reported, on April 13 Azerbaijan, Georgia and Romania signed a memorandum of understanding on the transportation of liquid gas. Later in Tbilisi on May 12 the participants signed a joint protocol on establishing a joint venture for implementing the project. The project of transporting Azeri liquid gas to Romania for further distribution there and throughout Europe envisages a terminal in Georgia and another in Romania. According to preliminary data approximately Euro 4-6 billion will be spent on the successful implementation of the project. The project envisages transporting Azeri natural gas though the gas pipeline to the Georgian Black Sea coast where it will be compressed at a special terminal before being transported by tankers to the Romanian Black Sea port of Kontstantsa, where it will be expanded to the original gas form and further transported through the gas pipelines.