The Azerbaijan Stream- Kyiv’s Unrealizable Dream

A meeting of the Ukrainian-Azerbaijani group on energy cooperation was held this month, during which the diversification of routes for delivery of Azerbaijani hydrocarbons to the European and world markets was discussed. The Ukrainian authorities seem to be beginning to realize that in the near future they may completely lose the transit of Russian gas through their territory, but the idea of ensuring the loading of a gas transportation system with the help of Azerbaijan is unlikely to promise any real prospects for Kyiv.

Leading expert of the Energy Security Fund, Igor Yushkov, says “Azerbaijani gas today has two ways into Europe: through the Balkans and through Russia. The second of these routes is complicated by the well-known transit policy of Gazprom: first to purchase gas from a third country, and then to transport it”.

"If Azerbaijan wants to supply gas to Ukraine, then it must first sell it to Gazprom, not to mention the Russian-Ukrainian gas supply contract, which Kyiv does not want to fulfill, and which has become the subject of proceedings in Stockholm,” Yushkov adds.

Therefore, for the Azerbaijani gas there remains only the southern route to Europe - through Turkey and Romania. In Yushkov's opinion, theoretically, Ukraine can buy gas from Azerbaijan and then drive it through Turkey and all the Balkans to feed the south-western regions of the country. However, in practice, this is impossible because Baku does not have excess gas - otherwise, these extra volumes would have been delivered to Europe long ago, since the EU leadership wants to diversify gas suppliers to its domestic market.

At present, the construction of the transadriatic gas pipeline TAP-TANAP is under way, which will supply Azerbaijani gas to Europe, but its capacity, as Yushkov says, is only 20 billion cubic meters, half of which will go to the Turkish market, and the lion's share of the remaining gas (8 billion cubic meters) will be sent to Italy. The rest will be equally divided between Greece and Bulgaria. "All this allows us to conclude that Azerbaijan simply cannot physically extract the 8-10 billion cubic meters of gas necessary for Ukraine.

Dimitri Dolaberidze