Greece, Italy to back TAP gas project

TIRANA, Aug. 7 – Greece and Italy agreed on Tuesday to throw their weight behind the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) to transport natural gas from the Caspian Sea and Middle East via Greece, Albania and Italy to the rest Europe, Greece’s Ekathimerini reports.
The willingness to back the project was confirmed during a meeting between Foreign Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos and his Italian counterpart Giulio Terzi in Rome.
Diplomatic sources said that Athens and Rome have decided to back the project after Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz II consortium, led by BP and Statoil, chose TAP and Nabucco West as the two pipelines that would be used to transport gas to Western Europe.
“This will make Greece, Italy and neighboring countries strategic partners in the distribution of natural gas in Europe,” said Avramopoulos.
TAP’s partners are Statoil, Swiss EGL and Germany’s E.ON Ruhrgas who say that the pipeline could create thousands of jobs.