SOCAR President: Shah Deniz Consortium to Decide Gas Route by April

A route to transport gas from the giant Shah Deniz field will be decided in April next year, the president of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) has said. 

Rovnag Abdullayev told journalists on Monday that the decision of how and through which route the gas would be supplied would be made in the second quarter of next year.

"At present, the proposals submitted by the pipeline consortia are still being carefully studied," the Interfax news agency reports him as saying. "There was never the goal of deciding on a route by the end of the year. This process will probably continue until the first quarter of 2012."

Mr. Abdullayev said that technical considerations on the project were taking place at present and would be completed in the first quarter of next year.

"Currently, the main commercial and technical proposals submitted by operator companies are being studied. This process will be finished in Q1, 2012."

The SOCAR president also said that he did not know where rumours of the cessation of the Nabucco pipeline had come from but that it was not out of the running for Shah Deniz gas.

"I do not know on what basis they forecast it," he said. "The Nabucco project is on the stage of consideration together with TAP (Trans Adriatic Pipeline) and ITGI (Interconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy pipeline) projects."