Government formally approves agreement with Italy and Greece on the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline
TIRANA, Feb. 6 – The Albanian government on Wednesday formally approved the agreement it will sign with Italy and Greece on the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline that is expected to be signed next week.
Prime Minister Sali Berisha said that the project will invest some two billion dollars and employ about 20,000 Albanians. He also said that the new pipeline will make it easier for common Albanians to use liquid gas for heating and cooking at a lower price.
The TAP project has planned to build some 200 km of pipes in the country after it crosses Greece and Turkey.
Albania, Greece and Italy will sign on Feb. 13 in Athens an agreement that seals their support for a natural gas pipeline project to cross their territories, a spokesman for Greece’s Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.
The intergovernmental agreement is a condition to build the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), a project to link Azerbaijan’s giant Shah Deniz II field with the three countries and beyond to western Europe.
TAP is one of two competing projects to carry gas from Shah Deniz to Europe, which is keen to reduce its dependence on existing suppliers including Russia. TAP’s shareholders are Swiss energy company Axpo (42.5 percent), Norway?s Statoil (42.5 percent) and E.ON Ruhrgas of Germany (15 percent). Its rival Nabucco West includes Austria’s OMV, Germany’s RWE, Hungary?s MOL and Turkey?s Botas.
The Shah Deniz consortium, which comprises BP, Statoil, Azeri energy firm SOCAR and Total, has a 50-percent equity option in both rival projects. It is expected to choose one of the two pipeline contenders by mid-2013.
Greece, Italy and Albania had signed a preliminary agreement to back TAP back in September.
