By Xandie (Alexandra) Kuenning
During a state visit to Turkey on Wednesday, March 5, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, together with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, attended the opening ceremony of the Iğdır–Nakhchivan (Nakhichevan) gas pipeline via video link from Ankara.
“The project we are inaugurating today will ensure Nakhchivan’s energy security. Gas from Azerbaijan will be transferred to the exclave of Nakhchivan through [Turkey] via a swap agreement, permanently resolving this issue for Nakhchivan,” Aliyev said during the ceremony.
In turn, Erdoğan highlighted that the 80-kilometer pipeline — which has a daily transport capacity of up to 2 million cubic meters — would serve as “a sign of our common destiny with Nakhchivan.”
A memorandum of understanding (MoU) regarding the pipeline was first signed between the Turkish company BOTAŞ and Azerbaijan’s State Oil Company (SOCAR) in 2010 in an effort to replace the exclave’s dependence on gas from Iran. A decade later, in 2020, Turkey’s Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Donmez and Azerbaijan’s Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov signed another MoU. Construction of the Iğdır–Nakhchivan pipeline finally began in September 2023.
During their speeches at the pipeline’s inauguration, both Aliyev and Erdoğan also touched upon other joint projects, including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum, and TANAP oil and gas pipeline projects.
