Türkiye to Start Natural Gas Supply to Nakhchivan via New Pipeline

A new natural gas pipeline to Nakhchivan is set to become operational this week, boosting energy security in Azerbaijan’s southwestern exclave.

"We are set to begin natural gas exports to Nakhchivan, following the completion of the Ighdir-Nakhchivan pipeline,” Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar announced.

"A ceremony is planned for this week, with the anticipated participation of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev,” Alparslan added.

With the inauguration of this pipeline, Türkiye will establish yet another strategic energy linkage, the minister said, adding that moving forward, Nakhchivan's natural gas needs will be met via Türkiye.

The new pipeline stretches from the far eastern Ighdir province of Türkiye to the Sadarak district in Nakhchivan on a 97.5-kilometer-long route. The length of the Azerbaijani section of the pipeline is 17.5 km, while the Turkish section is 80 km.

The pipeline has a throughput capacity of 2 million cubic meters of gas per day, or 730 million cubic meters per year, with the potential to double supply volumes. The current capacity fully meets the gas demand of Nakhchivan.

Officials from the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding in December 2020 to build the Ighdir-Nakhchivan gas pipeline to enhance Nakhchivan's energy security after decades of isolation.

In September 2023, President Aliyev and President Erdogan broke the ground for the project, which is operated by Azerbaijan's state-run energy conglomerate SOCAR and BOTAŞ, the state-owned crude oil and natural gas pipelines and trading company in Türkiye.

Nakhchivan is an exclave of Azerbaijan on the country’s southwest corner, surrounded by Armenia, Iran and Türkiye.

Currently, the region does not have a direct land connection with mainland Azerbaijan due to its separation from the Azerbaijani mainland after the Soviet occupation of the South Caucasus region in 1920. Following the region’s incorporation, Soviet rulers transferred some Azerbaijani territories, including its historic region of Zangezur, which borders Nakhchivan, to the newly created Armenian state.

Armenia’s military aggression against Azerbaijan in the early 1990s to occupy the Karabakh region, which is an internationally recognized part of Azerbaijan, deepened Nakhchivan’s isolation.

The full-scale war lasted from 1991 until a ceasefire deal in 1994, and as a result, Armenia occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territory – the Karabakh region and surrounding districts. The bloody war claimed the lives of over 30,000 Azerbaijanis and expelled one million more from their homeland.

All kinds of energy, electricity and transport connections, including highways and railways to and from Nakhchivan, were closed by Armenia. Overland and air connection with Nakhchivan is available either via Iran in the south or through Türkiye in the west.

After the occupation of Azerbaijan's Karabakh region by Armenia, the natural gas pipeline stretching from mainland Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan became dysfunctional.

Since then, SOCAR has been transporting natural gas to Nakhchivan in a swap operation with Iran, which gets gas from Baku and delivers it to Nakhchivan.

The Azerbaijani exclave has a population of about 500,000 and annual natural gas consumption of nearly half a billion cubic meters.

With the construction of the new pipeline, Nakhchivan will get uninterrupted natural gas supply through Türkiye. The gas to be transported in the new pipeline will reportedly meet the entire annual demand of the region.

The project is the fourth energy route connecting Türkiye and Azerbaijan after the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum, and Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) gas lines. TANAP is the largest segment of the Southern Gas Corridor mega pipeline that supplies gas from Azerbaijan to Türkiye and Europe.

After Azerbaijan’s liberation of its territories from Armenian occupation in 2020, all economic and transport links in the region were set to be restored. Armenia had agreed to guarantee the safety of transport links between the western regions of Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan to ensure the unimpeded movement of citizens, vehicles, and cargo in both directions.

Based on the agreement, the construction of new transport communications connecting Nakhchivan and the western regions of Azerbaijan – the Zangezur multimodal transport corridor – was planned. However, due to Armenia's failure to fulfill its obligations, the project remains incomplete. Despite this, construction is ongoing on Azerbaijan’s side, with a completion rate exceeding 50%.