FT: Tony Blair to advise on Azerbaijan gas project

Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, has been hired to advise a BP-led consortium on the export of natural gas from Azerbaijan to Europe, in a sign of the efforts now being made by western companies to reduce reliance on Russian supplies.

Mr Blair will join former German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and the chairman of Goldman Sachs International, Peter Sutherland – a former chairman of BP – on an advisory panel being set up by BP and its partners, a person close to the Azeri project said.

BP is leading a consortium that is developing Shah Deniz 2, a huge natural gasfield in the Caspian Sea. Its gas will be shipped through a “southern energy corridor” made up of two pipelines – one called Tanap that will run the length of Turkey, and another known as TAP stretching from Turkey’s border with Greece across Albania to Italy.
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