EU welcomes new Azeri gas line that avoids Russia

(BRUSSELS) - The European Commission on Friday welcomed the selection of a new gas pipeline that will bring Azeri gas to Europe from 2019 and thereby reduce the EU's dependence on Russian gas imports.

The decision announced earlier this week constitutes "a milestone in strengthening the energy security of our Union," European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said in a statement.

An Azeri energy majors consortium picked the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) to pump its gas from the Turkish network to Italy via Greece and Albania, ending a long rivalry for the contract.

The EU's Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said: "We now have a new partner for gas and I am confident we will receive more gas in the future."

The Shah Deniz II consortium which announced the choice includes Britain's BP, Norway's Statoil, France's Total and Azerbaijan's Socar.

The group aims to extract 16 billion cubic metres (560 billion cubic feet) of gas per year from under the Caspian Sea. Six billion cubic metres will go to Turkey from 2018 and the rest will go to Europe from 2019, BP says.

The main rival to the TAP had been the Nabucco project which would have pumped the gas from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria -- a longer and more expensive 1,300-kilometre (810-mile) route.