TIRANA, Sept. 26 – The intergovernmental agreement for the building of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) gas project that will link Italy, Greece and Albania will be signed in the next few days, a spokesman for Italy’s Foreign Ministry said as quoted by Reuters.
“The signature is imminent, it will be done in New York,” the source said, adding representatives of the three countries would be attending a United Nations meeting.
TAP is one of a number of competing projects to carry gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz II field to Europe which is keen to reduce its dependence on existing suppliers including Russia.
TAP’s shareholders are EGL of Switzerland (42.5 percent), Norway’s Statoil (STL.OL) (42.5 percent) and E.ON Ruhrgas of Germany (15 percent) E.ONGn.DE.
Italian utility Enel (ENEI.MI) has shown an interest in the project.
Albania okays deal
Albania has approved in principle an agreement with Italy and Greece on the Trans Adriatic Pipeline. Speaking at the government meeting on Wednesday, Prime Minister Sali Berisha described TAP as the biggest project in the region during the past 20 years. ‘TAP’s chances are almost sure because this is the most feasible and economical project of all and this is why this is a special moment for Albania where 2 billion Euros will be invested,” said Berisha, adding that government remained committed to eliminate every kind of bureaucratic burden and property issue so that TAP is built as soon as possible. The Prime Minister said TAP would make Albania’s gasification at a low cost and turn the country into a gas distributor for the region.
Italy and Greece have decided to back the TAP 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. In early 2012, Albania’s chances of getting of gas supply from an international pipeline boosted after Shah Deniz, the consortium developing a natural-gas field offshore Azerbaijan, announced it has excluded rival Interconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy, or ITGI. Albanian experts have described TAP as an opportunity that would benefit Albania both economically and politically, making it an important hub of the international gas pipeline for the Western Balkans. TAP aims to become operational in 2017 and would carry 10 billion cubic metres (bcm) of Caspian gas a year and be scalable to a maximum capacity of 20 bcm. TAP’s partners are Statoil, Swiss EGL and Germany’s E.ON Ruhrgas who say that the pipeline could create thousands of jobs.
