Earlier in 2014, Shah Deniz partners and SCP Co. awarded a $528-million contract for construction and commissioning support for pipeline facilities in Georgia to Bechtel Enka, a joint venture of Bechtel International and Turkey’s ENKA Insaat ve Sanayi AS. This contract covers construction of two 120-megawatt compressor stations and a pressure-reduction and metering station, with completion set for 2018.

Also in early 2014, a contract worth $174 million for pipeline and facilities engineering and project-management services was awarded to Chicago Bridge & Iron UK. The contract finishes in 2018.

Work on TANAP is scheduled to get underway in 2015 and be complete in 2018. The project is estimated to cost around $11.7 billion. TANAP’s initial capacity will be 16 bcm/year, but, with expansion phases, this will increase to 23 bcm/year and 31 bcm/year as more gas supply becomes available. Ultimately, according to some reports, the pipeline’s capacity will rise to 63 bcm/year.

WorleyParsons was awarded, in May of this year, a five-year contract for engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) services for the pipeline, which will run 1,841 km across Turkey. The company is to provide project-management, coordination, planning, design, engineering, construction-management, contracting, procurement, project-controls and other services for TANAP’s construction and facilities, including compressor stations.

TANAP’s route is not yet finalized. Some reports say that, once in western Turkey, a spur line will be built that will lead to Bulgaria, which has made a deal to buy 1 bcm/year of Azeri gas; but the main connection will be with the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), near Kipoi, Greece. TAP will transport the 10 bcm/year of SD2-gas volumes that have been contracted by European customers from the Shah Deniz consortium.

Meanwhile on the western side of the Southern Gas Corridor, TAP is issuing invitations to tender for several jobs concerning the construction of an 870-km pipeline. Last month, the consortium invited firms to bid on the supply of compressor stations in Greece and Albania. This bid follows a prequalification invitation, issued in June, to supply and install gas-turbine compressors.

TAP issued two separate tenders for each country. In Greece, the tender covers provision of engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning of one compressor station at Kipoi, in eastern Greece. The tender for Albania has the same scope for one compressor station at Fier, plus one metering station at Bilisht designed to measure natural gas arriving from the Greece section.

In October, TAP issued an invitation for tender for construction of the pipeline’s onshore 760-km section across Greece and Albania. That tender calls for engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of a 48-in.-dia pipeline.

TAP emphasized that the design and specification for the stations must be in line with TAP’s initial capacity of 10 billion cu m per year and provide for the possibility of later expanding capacity to 20 bcm/year.

Contracts are due to be awarded during the second half of 2015, and construction will begin in 2016. The pipeline will be ready for operation in 2019, when the entire Southern Gas Corridor will cease to be an idea and finally materialize.