European Union and Turkey have been very helpful in making sure the Southern Gas Corridor is smoothly developed, Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission’s vice president for Energy Union said in an interview with ICIS, Trendreports.

He was talking about the current state of relations between EU and Turkey, which is one of the beneficiaries of the Southern Gas Corridor project.

"The potential for cooperation for the EU with Turkey is quite high and we’ve been very helpful in making sure the Southern Gas Corridor is smoothly developed, although discussions about it were not easy,” he noted.

However, he acknowledged Turkey’s growing role as a transit route for Caspian gas and a key component of the EU-backed Southern Gas Corridor.

"The project is due to be commissioned next year and southern European countries such as Greece, Bulgaria, Albania and Italy are expected to start off-taking Azerbaijani gas transited via Turkey,” said ICIS.

The Southern Gas Corridor is one of the priority projects for the EU and envisages the transportation of 10 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas from the Caspian region through Georgia and Turkey to Europe.

The launching ceremony of the first stage of the Southern Gas Corridor was held in Baku on May 29, 2018, while opening ceremony of TANAP was held on June 12, 2018 in the Turkish city of Eskisehir.

The gas from the Azerbaijani Shah Deniz field has already gone through the first segment of the Southern Gas Corridor - from the Sangachal terminal to the expanded South Caucasus Pipeline.

Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) and Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) were connected on the Turkish-Greek border.