Greece’s state gas company DEPA wants to buy gas from Azerbaijan’s giant Shakh-Deniz field directly when the exploration of the project comes into a second stage in 2010, DEPA Chairman Raphael Moissis said yesterday. “We have touched upon such possibilities during talks in Baku on June 21-22, but such discussions take several years.”
DEPA has agreed with the Turkish state gas firm BOTAS to buy 0.75 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Azeri gas from 2006 and 3 bcm a year by 2010 via a 285-kilometer (177-mile) pipeline between Turkey and Greece to be built by 2006 and to have a capacity of 8 bcm a year. But Moissis said he would prefer to have a direct supply deal during the second phase when gas from Shakh-Deniz could be shipped to Italy, France, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Slovenia and Serbia via Greece if its price was not higher than prices at which Russia’s gas giant Gazprom sells to Europe. “A feasibility study to build a pipeline between Greece and Italy will be ready as early as end of July 2004, with investors to be found by the end of 2004,” Moissis said.