Two project partners, the Azerbaijani State Oil Company SOCAR and Turkish BOTAS Petroleum Pipeline Corporation, agreed to set up a joint venture - a gas pipeline operator, on a parity basis.

According to the agreement, the structure of TANAP operating company must be similar to the operating company of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.

BP has recently joined the process and the conditions of the company’s joining, namely, the share and through the shares of SOCAR or BOTAS are still unclear.

The participants of the joint venture, SOCAR and BOTAS, are discussing this issue.

The commercial gas supplies to Turkey have been launched via the first phase of the TANAP gas pipeline since late June last year. The gas is transferred to the local gas pipeline system in the Eskisehir province.

The process of filling the line with gas in test mode up to the Turkish-Greek border, which began on April 15, ended a few days ago. TANAP announced its readiness to supply fuel to Europe as soon as the European Trans-Adriatic-Pipeline (TAP) gas pipeline is ready to receive gas. This is expected next year.

TANAP project envisages transportation of gas from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field to the western borders of Turkey.

The length of TANAP is 1,850 kilometers and its an initial annual capacity is 16 billion cubic meters of gas. Around six billion cubic meters of this gas is meant to be delivered to Turkey, with the remaining volume to be supplied to Europe. The project is worth $7 billion.

The share distribution of TANAP shareholders is as follows: Southern Gas Corridor CJSC - 51 percent, SOCAR Turkey Enerji - 7 percent, Botas - 30 percent, BP - 12 percent.

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