Tekfen wins $2-bln oil platform contract

ANKARA - Anadolu Agency

Azerbaijan has awarded a $2-billion oil platform construction contract to Turkish firm Tekfen.

Turkish construction company Tekfen has won a $2 billion contract to build two oil plat-forms in the Caspian Sea, Turkey’s energy minister has announced.

“This is a $2 billion investment and we are proud of it,” Taner Yıldız said during a meeting with the Chamber of Commerce of Ankara (ATO), noting the project had been awarded to Tekfen by the Azerbaijani government.

He said that if a Turkish company could demonstrate that, with its technology, it can han-dle such a project in the Caspian, it could also construct drilling platforms and carry out oil exploration in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

The announcement comes two days after Yıldız declared the South Caucasus Pipeline a “peace corridor” linking the Caucasus with the Balkans, at a groundbreaking ceremony in Baku on Sept. 20.

The South Caucasus Pipeline is the first phase of the Southern Gas Corridor project which will carry gas from the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea to Turkey and will connect to the Trans Anatolia Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) via Georgia and reach Europe.

Turkey is the second-largest shareholder after BP in the South Caucasus Pipeline project with a $5.2 billion investment.

TANAP is intended to transport natural gas from the Shah Deniz II and other fields in Azerbaijan – and possibly from other neighboring countries – through Turkey to Europe.

Tekfen, a Turkish conglomerate based in Istanbul, has many subsidiaries engaged in a di-verse range of construction activities including power generation, airports, petroleum and roadways.