BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 23. The European Commission won't pursue the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline project, admitting missing this opportunity 10-15 years ago, Caspian Policy Center's (CPC) Advisory Board Member Richard Hoagland (who earlier worked as a diplomat in the Caspian region) said, Trend reports.
He made the remark while commenting on recent meetings with EU officials in an article published by the CPC.
"A senior EU official with broad knowledge and deep experience in the Caspian region commented that the European Commission has judged that the long-proposed Trans-Caspian Pipeline to transit natural gas from Central Asia, especially Turkmenistan, to existing pipelines that begin in Azerbaijan and move westward to Europe would take so much time and money that it's not worth pursuing," the expert noted.
“In reality, we missed this opportunity 10-15 years ago,” Hoagland explained, referring to the EU official.
"Natural gas resources from the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa will be adequate for Europe into the foreseeable future, said this official, who asked to remain anonymous," the CPC member added.
To note, Ashgabat periodically calls the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline one of the most promising megaprojects.
The US had been actively supporting this project until 2023, and in recent years, in its mini-version (Trans Caspian Connector for 8–10 billion cubic meters of gas per year), that is, in the form of a 78-kilometer pipe connecting the Turkmen Magtymulguly field with a gas compressor station on Azerbaijan's Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) block of fields.
However, in 2023, US energy experts John Roberts and Julian Bowden told US media that the leadership of Turkmenistan informed US diplomats that it's not interested in the Trans Caspian Connector and won't do anything less than the possible revival of a decades-old idea of a 30 billion cubic meters per year pipeline and long-term gas sales contracts, which, according to these experts, is currently not relevant.
The Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline mega-project has been discussed for more than 30 years but has not moved from a dead point.
The CPC is one of the best-known think tanks in the US, focused on research on political, economic, energy processes, and security issues in the Caspian region.
