Southern Gas Corridor

The Southern Gas Corridor is an initiative of the European Commission for the natural gas supply from Caspian and Middle Eastern regions to Europe. The main goal of the Southern Gas Corridor is to reduce Europe's dependency on Russian gas. The route from Azerbaijan to Europe consist of the South Caucasus Pipeline, the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline, and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline. The total investment of this route is estimated US$45 billion. The main supply source would be the Shah Deniz gas field, located in the Caspian Sea.

The initiative was proposed in the European Commission's Communication "Second Strategic Energy Review – An EU Energy Security and Solidarity Action Plan" (COM/2008/781) in 2008. The European Union identified a number of partner countries for this initiative, such as Azerbaijan, Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Iraq, Egypt and Mashreq countries. Uzbekistan and Iran should represent, when political conditions permit, a further significant supply source for the EU.

On 8 May 2009, the summit "Southern Corridor – New Silk Road" was held in Prague.

In the Trans-European Networks – Energy (TEN–E) program, the European Union designated three of the pipelines as of strategic importance (ITGI, Nabucco and White Stream)." Also the Trans Adriatic Pipeline was identified that time as as a Southern Corridor project. It was planned that the Southern Corridor projects could provide the necessary transportation capacity to deliver 60–120 billion cubic metres per annum (2.1–4.2 trillion cubic feet per annum) of Caspian and Central Asian gas directly to Europe.

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