Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR will invest $17bn in Turkey by 2018, the CEO of SOCAR Energy Turkey, Kenan Yavuz, has said.
He told Turkish media that the investment would be the largest in the history of the Turkish private sector, SOCAR reported.
SOCAR has the controlling package of shares in Turkey's largest petrochemicals holding company Petkim, which is building a $5bn refinery on the Aegean coast.
The recently launched project to build the Trans-Anatolia gas pipeline, worth $6bn, follows other major projects linking Azerbaijan and Turkey - the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, Yavuz commented.
He noted that today Turkey is the biggest buyer of Azerbaijani gas, with the majority of gas from Shah Deniz, Azerbaijan's biggest gas deposit, being exported to Turkey.
The gas agreement signed between Azerbaijan and Turkey last year set a favourable price for the sale of gas to Turkey.