Turkey-Azerbaijan South Gas Corridor is on the table

Energy and Natural Resources Minister Taner Yıldız will attend a meeting tomorrow of the advisory board for the Turkey-Azerbaijan South Gas Corridor. Top officials from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Greece, Albania, Bulgaria and Italy will also attend the meeting, which will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan. Since providing energy supply security has become one of the top issues of governments, Turkey undertakes a key role as a natural gas corridor. CEOs and other top-level executives of companies that are involved in the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline Project (TANAP) and the Trans Adriatic Natural Gas Pipeline Project (TAP) will also participate to the meeting.

The agenda of the meeting will mainly focus on the latest developments in the TANAP and TAP, which were created in order to meet Europe's increasing energy demands. Also attending the meeting are the project partners and ministers of countries involved in the TAP, which will distribute gas that will arrive at Turkey's western border from Şah Deniz, Azerbaijan to then be distributed to the rest of the Europe via the TANAP. As a partner of the TANAP project, the Turkish government is working to complete the pipeline even before the deadline, while holding talks with the Russian state-owned natural gas giant Gazprom for possible routes for a so-called "Turkish Stream" pipeline, whose name originates from the cancelled South Stream project that was supposed to provide natural gas to Europe from Russia via Bulgaria. According to the announcement of the Energy Ministry, an advisory board meeting will be held on Feb. 12, and will begin with speeches by Azerbaijani President İlham Aliyev and European Commission Assistant Chairman Maroş Şefçoviç. Along with Aliyev, Yıldız and Şefçoviç, Azeri Energy Minister Natig Aliyev, Georgian Deputy Prime Minister and Energy Minister of Kakhaber Kaladze, Greek Minister of Environment and Energy Panagiotis Lafazanis, Albanian Minister of Energy and Industry Damian Gjiknuri, Bulgarian Energy Minister Temenujka Petkova and Italian Minister of Industry Claudio De Vincenti will also attend the meeting. Yıldız will also be holding one-on-one meetings with the ministers of other countries.