U.S. Department of State’s Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs Carlos Pascual gave a presentation on “Crisis in Ukraine: energy factor” at the Atlantic Council.

In his speech Pascual underlined the role of the Southern Gas Corridor in transportation of the Azerbaijani gas to the South Europe and ensuring energy security.

The gas which will be produced at the second stage of Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz field development will be the main source of the Southern Gas Corridor, which envisages the transportation of the Caspian gas to the European markets.

The Shah Deniz consortium announced the selection of TAP as the main route for transporting its gas to Europe in late June. Another pipeline which was vying for Azerbaijan’s gas transportation to Europe was Nabucco West.

The selection of TAP marked the start of implementing the Southern Gas Corridor project that will allow Europe to diversify its supply sources and increase energy security, and enable Azerbaijan to acquire a new market-Europe.

He also informed the participants about the gas supply disruptions in Europe, legal aspects impeding sale of imported gas to the third countries and shortcomings in the Europe’s energy security.

Europe began to make decisions to prevent the use of gas supply as the political pressure, Pascual noted.

He said the gas distribution network of some neighboring countries was renovated from north to south, from south to west and from west to north in order to facilitate gas transportation. Distribution system was also renovated in the Balkan countries.

On the importance of the liquid petroleum gas supply to Europe, the envoy said Europe’s demand is 45 billion cubic meters of liquid gas but this volume is going to rise in the future.

AzerNews