Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on a visit to Azerbaijan today (17 May), is due to sign a EU-backed gas deal that is expected to unlock Azeri gas reserves for the West and eventually trim Europe's energy dependence on Russia, the press in the region reports.
Precise details of Monday's expected deal are unknown, but it should at least resolve pricing differences over 6 billion cubic metres of gas Azerbaijan currently sells to Turkey, The Moscow Times writes.
Azeri Energy Minister Natik Aliyev is quoted as saying the two sides had agreed in principle on volumes Turkey would receive from the Shah Deniz II gas field in the Caspian Sea, which will produce an additional 16 billion cubic metres per year on top of the current 9-10 bcm from Shah Deniz I.
Turkey has requested 6-7 bcm of gas from the second phase, and Azerbaijan will look to accelerate the start of production to 2014, he said.
European buyers are looking for volumes from the second phase of production at Shah Deniz, which is operated by BP and Statoil and is due to come online between 2014 and 2017.
That would free up volumes of gas to flow to Nabucco, or initially to ITGI, the Interconnection Turkey-Greece-Italy favoured by Italian company Edison. ITGI represents a cheaper version or a 'first phase' of the more ambitious Nabucco gas pipeline.
The deal is pivotal to the future of both the ITGI and Nabucco projects. Elio Ruggeri, head of gas infrastructure at Edison, recently said that if Azerbaijan were to sell its gas to Russia instead, Europeans "should say goodbye" to the Southern gas corridor, which is designed to decrease the Union's dependence on Russian gas.
Turkish daily Zaman writes that Erdoğan's visit to Baku will also address difficult issues such as the 'frozen conflict' of Nagorno Karabakh, in which Ankara is siding with Azerbaijan against Armenia. Erdoğan said Turkey would never open its border with Armenia unless there were a notable breakthrough in the Nagorno-Karabakh problem.
The leaders are also expected to take decisions on lifting the visa requirement between the two countries.
A monument in Baku to the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, will be inaugurated during Erdoğan's visit, the local press writes.