BP: Gas pipeline’s Georgia section ready by mid-2018

tbilisi — BP plans to complete by mid2018 the Georgian section of a $40-billion strategic pipeline bringing Caspian gas from Azerbaijan into Europe, the British energy company’s country manager for Georgia said.

The so-called southern gas corridor, which is meant to reduce the European Union’s dependence on Russian energy, will start at Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz II gas field and cross through Georgia, Turkey, Greece, Albania and Italy.

Around 10 billion cubic metres (bcm) per year of Azeri gas should reach Europe by 2020 through the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, with another 6 bcm destined for Georgia through the South Caucasus Pipeline and Turkey through the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline.

“All of the project’s components are on schedule as far as their intended delivery day for when commercial operations are due to begin in the middle to the later part of the next year,” Chris Schlueter told Reuters.

“Later this year, we’ll start to introduce the gas to the pipeline in order to get it ready for operations,” he said.

Schlueter said the project’s capital expenditure in 2016 was $550 million. In the first quarter of this year, the figure was around $100 million.

“Peak spending was last year and we will start to slow down [in terms of investment] this year,” he said.