Spain’s Enagas joins TAP as French, German shareholders quit

TIRANA, Sept. 30 – Spain’s Enagas has joined the Trans Adriatic Pipeline consortium as Belgium’s Fluxys increased its stake after the two companies bought out France’s Total and Germany’s E.ON from the pipeline project.
Enagas, which operates Spain’s natural gas grid as well as three liquefied natural gas terminals, is acquiring a 16 percent share in the pipeline to take Caspian gas to European markets.
Belgian gas transmission operator Fluxys is increasing its stake by three percentage points to 19 percent. The two companies acquired the stakes in the project that had been held by Total (10 percent) and E.ON (9 percent).
The other shareholders in the pipeline are British supermajor BP (20 percent), Azeri state player Socar (20 percent), Norway’s Statoil (20 percent) and Swiss energy company Axpo (5 percent).
The TAP project aims to transport gas from Azerbaijan’s BP-led Shah Deniz II field in the Caspian Sea, one of the world’s largest gas fields.
“The project is currently in the development phase and is preparing for the construction of the pipeline. In 2015, we plan to start with building and renovating roads and bridges in Albania to access future pipeline construction sites. The actual laying of the pipeline is planned to start in 2016,” Michael Hoffmann, the External Affairs Director of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) has said.
The 870-kilometre pipeline will start by connecting with the Trans Anatolian Pipeline (Tanap) near the Turkish-Greek border at Kipoi, before crossing Greece and Albania and the Adriatic Sea to reach southern Italy.
First gas sales to Georgia and Turkey are targeted for late 2018, and first deliveries to Europe are targeted to follow around a year later, according to TAP.