Baku, September 17 (AZERTAC). On September 19, the consortium for development of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas and condensate field will sign contracts with buyers of Azerbaijani gas in Europe, President of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) Rovnag Abdullayev told journalists.

"The ceremony of signing the contracts on the purchase of Azerbaijani gas from the second phase of development of Shah Deniz gas and condensate field will be held in Baku," Abdullayev said.

The peak of production in the second stage of Shah Deniz-2 project will start from 2022 and will last for seven to eight years.

Drilling is planned to be conducted from five clusters, and the entire process will be completed in 2022, in particular the first gas is planned to be obtained by 2018.

The reserves of the Shah Deniz field are estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas. In late June, the consortium for the development of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas and condensate field announced the selection of Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) project as a route for transportation of its gas to European markets. The second pipeline, which competed for the transportation of Azerbaijani gas to Europe, was Nabucco West.

The TAP project is designed to transport gas from Caspian region through Greece, Albania and Adriatic Sea to the South of Italy, and then to the Western Europe.

The gas which will be produced within the framework of the second phase of development of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas condensate field is considered as the main source for the project.

The initial capacity of TAP will amount to 10 billion cubic metres per annum with the possibility of expanding to 20 billion cubic metres per annum.

Currently TAP`s shareholders include BP (20 percent), SOCAR (20 percent), Statoil (20 percent), Fluxys (16 percent), Total (10 percent), E.ON (9 percent) and Axpo (5 percent).

The construction of TAP is planned to start in 2015.

The contract for development of the offshore Shah Deniz field was signed on June 4, 1996. Participants of the agreement are: BP (operator) - 25.5 percent, Statoil - 25.5 percent, NICO - 10 percent, Total - 10 percent, Lukoil - 10 percent, TPAO - nine percent, SOCAR - 10 percent.