Turkey’s state gas grid operator Bota? has opened a tender for a gas pipeline to supply Azerbaijan’s exclave of Nakhchivan. The new supply route would sideline Iranian gas sales to Azerbaijan and comes as Ankara is trying to repair its relationship with the United States. Sandwiched between Iran and Armenia and sharing a tiny border with Turkey, Nakhchivan has long relied on Iran for natural gas for both domestic heating and power generation. The move follows an announcement in February by the presidents of Turkey and Azerbaijan that they planned to fast track the construction of the pipeline, which has been on hold since 2010, when an agreement was first signed to build it. Bota?’s tender calls for the design of a pipeline running around 80 kilometers from the eastern Turkish city of I?d?r to the border with Nakhchivan, capable of carrying up to around 2 billion cubic meters […]