According to him, at the same time another gas pipeline project Nabucco did not lost its significance as well and Turkey still considers the issue of its implementation.
"Considering the growing demand for natural gas in European Union, Turkey is sure that the Nabucco project will also be implemented," Yildiz said.
He noted that Nabucco and TAP projects are not competitors, on the contrary, they can exist in parallel complementing each other.
A consortium of the Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas condensate field development with about 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas reserves, announced its choice of the TAP project in late June as a gas transportation route to European markets. Nabucco West was the second pipeline that competed for the transportation of Azerbaijani gas to Europe.
TAP is designed to transport gas from the Caspian region via Greece and Albania and across the Adriatic Sea to southern Italy and then to Western Europe.
The initial capacity of the TAP pipeline will be 10 billion cubic meters per year with the possibility of expanding to 20 billion cubic meters per year.
TAP shareholders are AXPO (42.5 per cent), Statoil (42.5 per cent and E.ON Ruhrgas (15 per cent).
The construction of TAP is expected to start in 2015.
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